Gimme One Reason
by truhekili
Summary: How do Meredith, Alex and Cristina manage after the Season 6 Finale? Begins 1 week after Derek's/Owen's funerals. FAB 3 friendship centric. Meredith does NOT miscarry in this story. Pairings: Alex/April, Cristina/Burke, Meredith/OC. 10 chapters. Complete.
1. Chapter 1

_Standard disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual._

* * *

By the third funeral, the laughter stopped. Derek's had been too crowded, Owen's too formal, and Reed's too surreal. The chorus was too small now, anyway, and only Cristina stood beside her, as Meredith stared impassively across the grassy field. It was harder to laugh, anyway, since she'd seen Reed just moments before, before, well… because she'd walked right passed her with a polite nod, back when time still ran clockwise.

It was all past tense, now.

Now, there was just before, just before, and now-s tumbling around randomly in fits and starts, and Meredith glared across the field at her sort of sister, who was sobbing into her shaking hands, and she just wanted to shake her, or to slap her, because every twitch and every gasping, hiccupping breath she uttered grated, almost like how she twirled her hair nervously as she related epic paragraphs of trivia, after everyone had stopped listening.

The crowd dispersed, and Meredith went home to change out of her black dress, and they returned to the hospital, where Cristina grabbed Alex's chart, pacing as she read, while Meredith perched by his bedside. They'd finally gotten all the blood out of his hair, she noticed, delicately brushing her fingertips across the short wisps, which spiked like bristling, angry crab grass.

He'd need that defiance, she thought, since he was still too pale and his fingers were still too cool to be his, really, since Alex always simmered at a slow burn, even when he was sleeping, and he needed to be Alex again, she needed him to be Alex again – all ornery, hard scrabble, infuriatingly tenacious as crab grass Alex – and he needed to wake up.

"These look good," Cristina insisted briskly, nodding as she scanned his latest lab results.

Her voice was deadly calm, and all business as she related the vitals, and Meredith didn't interrupt her as Cristina pulled out another binder and began pouring over the pages.

Derek had been her first cardiac solo, and Cristina reviewed her work obsessively. It didn't matter to her that a second bullet had shredded his heart, that she had operated at gun point, that she hadn't had time to sterilize the surgical field. None of that mattered to her, Meredith knew, because she was Cristina Yang, and she didn't fail at cardio, not even when her patients were shot on her table, inches below her hands.

Meredith replayed those events obsessively, too, as her heart rate sped and she gripped Alex's hand tighter and watched as Cristina sat quietly, rocking in the hard plastic chair as she made small motions with her fingers, reviewing every cut and every stitch, as if she could still save him, if she just mastered one more technique.

Stopping her would have been pointless, though, because then she'd have to replay the rest of the story, too, would have to see Owen catch a bullet between the eyes. There were worse things for Cristina to obsess over, Meredith knew, and she was soon back to Alex's chart anyway.

Meredith leaned back in her own seat, exhaled heavily, and watched as Cristina sprang up again, leaving the room as she muttered something about a lab report that needed to be updated. Nodding blankly, Meredith leaned in closer and brushed her fingers over Alex's hair again, more insistently this time, trying to annoy him.

"Hey," she whispered, squeezing his hand more firmly, as her voice strangled in her throat, her eyes burning and bleary in the harsh fluorescent light of the ICU. "Did I tell you you're going to be an uncle?"

* * *

"Don't be stupid," Cristina barked three days later, shoving his hands away as she peeled back his thick bandages and examined the scar lines.

"T's fine," Alex muttered groggily, shifting uncomfortably as she traced her finger along the fresh sutures.

"No thanks to you," she snorted, completing her exam and taping him back up. "What'd you expect to happen, thrashing around like that? You're lucky Teddy re-did these," she snapped. "I'd have used staples."

"Carpentry," he grumbled, his voice trailing off into a muffled haze.

"At least I didn't go to state school," she smirked, busily writing several comments on his chart. "Now I get to go be an actual surgeon," she noted smugly, turning to leave.

"Lunch here at one," Meredith called after her, as she leaned back in her seat. He'd been moved from the ICU that morning, and his new room had a window, and she watched tiredly as narrow clouds streaked the sky, until her eyes fluttered shut.

It was her only option, because she couldn't go home alone, and she couldn't face the on call rooms, and she couldn't stand all the sympathetic glances, or the curious whispers and stares, and she still wondered if Cristina was ready to blow at any moment, since Dr. Wyatt hadn't actually cleared her to do surgery, yet, and Alex's hand was still too cool, and she almost missed the funerals, which at least had guide lines.

"Mere," Cristina interrupted abruptly, shaking her awake a few hours later. "Food," she noted, shoving a salad and a yogurt cup into her hands.

Meredith nodded, blinking as she peered up at the monitors again.

"He's fine," Cristina insisted, digging into her own lunch. "Teddy came by about an hour ago to check on him."

"Okay," Meredith agreed, watching her closely. They hadn't mentioned Owen's name, not since the funeral; they hadn't mentioned Derek's either. They hadn't mentioned a lot of things, and Cristina had even volunteered to supervise the Pit, anything to keep busy, and Bailey had been stopping by to talk about anything except funerals, and the Chief had been by to discuss anything except the new head of Neurosurgery, and no one said a word about how they all traveled in packs now – though apparently cardio was fine.

Cristina finished her lunch and was off answering a page before Meredith could look up again, and she ate her salad as she looked over the detailed notes that her and Altman had added to his chart.

"Dr. Grey," a startled voice blurted from just inside the door frame. "M-M-Meredith, I… I wasn't sure you'd still be here," April Keppner muttered, staring awkwardly at her.

"Excuse me?" Meredith asked, baffled by her presence.

"I just thought," she stammered, "with…with the Chief, with Der… with Dr. Shepherd… I thought you'd be…," her voice trailed off uncomfortably.

"What did you want?" Meredith asked, exhaling reluctantly.

"Dr. Karev," she stammered, glancing wide eyed at Alex, who still slept peacefully. "He, he was… with Reed… when she… she was my friend, my best friend, and I…I… wanted to ask him…I just…I wanted to know.. if he… if she-" the young doctor stammered.

"I don't think this is the time," Meredith interrupted her sternly. He was stable, Altman insisted. He'd be fine, Cristina assured her. But Alex wasn't a talker to begin with, and certainly not about things like this, and certainly not with a twitchy, frantic intern.

"I… I passed by twice yesterday," April said quietly, her voice still shaking slightly as she pointed toward the open doorway. "I heard that he was awake, talking with you and Dr. Yang. I just thought, if he remembered-"

"We don't know what he saw," Meredith interrupted her curtly. She had no idea how much her remembered, really, since he'd mentioned something about Reed, but nothing about the bloody path to the elevator where they found him, or whether he saw a shooter, or how he'd managed to survive, like an ornery patch of crab grass.

"Of course, of course," April nodded vigorously, still wide eyed and visibly trembling. "And I'm… I'm sorry… about the… about-"

"Thank you," Meredith said firmly, cutting her off again, as April nodded and fled. The young woman meant well, she was sure. But she just couldn't take one more person awkwardly telling her how sorry she was.

She probably should have added something about Reed, though, since apparently April had needed a black dress, too. But then she'd have to speak in past tense again, about another person she'd seen alive just minutes before, and every word about them now just seemed to push them further away, and she couldn't talk about the past just then, not when the only future and the only family that she had left still needed her protection.

* * *

Two weeks later, Meredith woke abruptly, startled as she frantically swiped her hand across the empty sheets, as strange wall paper and sloppy piles of clothes and a messy path of papers and shoes and bags strewn clear across the floor drew into muddled focus, until she remembered that she was in the spare bedroom. Silence surrounded her until she scrambled into the hall, where muffled noises echoed down the dimly lit corridor.

"Stop squirming," she heard Cristina hiss, as she hesitantly pushed the door open and peeked into the steamy bathroom. "You'll pull them out again," Cristina snapped, glaring at Alex as she roughly taped him back up. He was bundled in towels and wet from the shower and foggy from the drugs, but apparently clear enough to mutter something that made Cristina snicker.

"Help me get him back to his room," she said to Meredith, hauling him up from one side as they walked him down the hall and settled him back into his bed, Meredith unwinding the damp towels and dropping them carelessly on the floor as Cristina hastily spread two blankets over him, rolling her eyes as she glanced at the clock on his nightstand.

He was mostly asleep by the time they finished and Meredith just watched quietly as Cristina checked his meds again, and the bandages, before lightly brushing her fingers over his hair. It almost made Meredith gasp, or hurl, and her ears were still ringing when Cristina announced abruptly that she was going to the hospital, and the pharmacy, and maybe the store – she didn't say which – though it was already nine in the evening.

She left before Meredith could stop her, or call her on whatever lie she was telling this time, and Meredith just sat quietly beside him on the bed, leaning back against the wall and exhaling heavily, as vague shadows still danced in the hall. They'd been staying in the spare bedroom, her and Cristina, and she still refused to call it Izzie's old room, or her sort of sister's, and she still refused to look at the framed post-it above her bed, whenever she went in to her own room to change, and she still wouldn't open the sympathy cards that poured in from the polite and the well meaning and the sort of informally related.

Sliding her hand lightly across Alex's chest, she double checked, because there were no monitors here, though his breathing was steady, and less constrained then it had been even the day before, by the bruising that ringed his ribs. He'd be fine, they all said, Teddy, Cristina, Bailey, but they both knew that fine was the ultimate F word, and she snaked a finger between his just in case, too, though his hands were warm now, and his hair still stood in bristling spikes, like an army of sentinels, and they were strangely comforting, when the wind rustled through the branches outside his window, casting their own eerie, strangely hypnotic patterns across his dimly lit room.

She drifted off nearly an hour later, and woke early the next morning, gathering the towels from the floor and heading down to the kitchen, where laundry and foraging began, paced awkwardly around the large vases and over stuffed bouquets, and Lexi's keys, tossed haphazardly on the counter the week before. She hadn't said much, just something about Boston, but her room was empty, and Meredith knew she was gone.

It was one of the few Grey traits Meredith had ever seen in Lexi, the impulse to run, and it wasn't one she admired, the drive to scurry away, like Thatcher, and they had all been hers first, anyway – Derek, Cristina, Alex, all of Seattle - had been hers first, and she'd seen enough blood spilled to know that it didn't make you sisters, not for real.

Continuing her foraging, she retrieved a box and two cartons, and traced back up the stairs, handing him his meds from the nightstand and two stale pop tarts. She grabbed one herself, blueberry, and watched as he smugly forced his own down, and polished it off with a half carton of chocolate milk which she wasn't entirely sure hadn't expired.

She finished off the other one herself, anyway, and it didn't matter about crumbs or drinking glasses, because they didn't need to be domestic anymore, since Derek was gone, and Izzie wasn't coming back, and Cristina's idea of putting away the groceries was to cover every horizontal surface not already buried under stacks of mail or piles of take out menus or masses of rolled up newspapers still in their little wrappers.

She called them both slobs, though, even if Alex could barely move, and Meredith ran the washing machine now and then, and the dish washer – well, back when they used plates and utensils, before, before, before Derek was gone, and Owen, before Cristina had started lying to her, and Alex had a gaping hole blown into him, and Meredith perched on his bed, gnawing on semi stale pop tarts, with tears rolling down her face.

She probably wasn't supposed to be there, she thought abruptly, not in a blubbering mess, but he wouldn't tell her that she was lucky because at least she still had the baby, and he wouldn't tell her that things happened for a reason, or that some god provides, or that he was sorry, as if he'd had anything to with the funerals, or that she'd be a perfect mother, anyway, or that she was still young, and could start over – as if that hadn't been what she'd freaking been doing, until the latest round of funerals, as if there was any point.

Brushing her fingers over her shirt, she wondered if it was starting already, if another generation of dark and twisty was stirring inside her, because she was sure the baby would be a girl, and just like her, because that was just the story of her life, and she was sure her daughter would hate her, because dark and twisty would haunt her, too, and because her daughter had already begun losing people herself, before she was even born.

"Heard I'm going to be an uncle," Alex muttered, watching her vaguely through half open eye lids, and she nodded as she tried to catch her breath and she closed three of her fingers around two of his and she leaned back against the wall again and she shouldn't be trembling or sobbing because the baby would need her and the baby would think it was about her and the baby would be terrified, too, if she didn't get a grip on herself.

"I can't do this," she whispered, and she wondered if she was angry at Derek for leaving, or if he was angry at her for being a blubbering mess when their daughter needed her, or if she was angry at herself for being the mother she swore she'd never be or if she was angry at Derek for being the father she already had, or didn't, even if he had no choice.

Alex didn't say anything, just swallowed awkwardly as he squeezed her fingers harder, like he had the first day he really woke up, and his hands were still warm, so it hadn't just been the heat from his shower, and at least the possibly expired milk wouldn't kill them, even if her daughter would probably never like pop tarts, now, and she couldn't do this, but she had no choice, either, and she couldn't' do a baby when she couldn't even do fresh milk, and she couldn't tell Dr. Wyatt all that, when there were no words for any of it, and she just squeezed back harder, because really, what else was there to say.

* * *

It was nearly nine thirty by the time Cristina sped into the narrow parking space, the hazy street lights casting their own fog around her as she walked briskly down the sidewalk. The hotel lobby was too brightly lit, almost making her wince as she doze into the nearest elevator car, and it reeked of decadence, of over stuffed pillows and elaborate brocade bedding and huge five course meals and fussy maids and pristine floors and the gaudy chandeliers that her mother loved and everything that she hated about Beverly Hills.

He was waiting for her, as he'd promised, and her arms were around him before the door locked and she was dragging him to the bed and he was always one for formalities but her hands were already pouring over his sculpted chest and her lips were already brushing his neck and she was already undressed before he could breathe out a hello.

His clothes followed hers to the floor and he didn't bother to fold them precisely this time and she the room was dimly lit but she remembered every inch of him, every line and every plane, and his first word to her in person came out over and over, "Cristina," first as a tentative question, and then as a deep sigh and then as a sharp gasp and then as a rumbling murmur and then as a heated growl and then as a thunderous, shuddering groan that shook the room around them and she wouldn't stop until he said it, again and again, in that rich baritone that washed over her like a gentle rain.

She remembered every inch of him and her body coiled around his frantically, her nails digging into his heavily muscled back and she was trembling and panicked and it was all in front of her again, steely eyes and gun metal and the acrid scent and screaming and she just pulled him closer, deeper, shaking violently as she willed him to drive out the images and the sounds with his lips and his hands and own feral howl.

It had been too long, or maybe just yesterday, she couldn't quite remember, as the heat from his body boiled her veins, and his electricity coursed furiously through her, and she just gasped and threw her head back like a shrieking banshee as a riot of long, wild curls spilled over his shoulders, shrouding his own scars, as crushing wave after crushing wave crashed over her, slamming her body against his again and again and again.

It would have been too long if it'd even been another minute more by then, and she dug her claws deeper into his flesh, clinging desperately amid another on-rushing tsunami as

his limbs locked iron clad around her and his body shook fiercely on a scale that could only be measured in Richters and fire burned through her lungs because she still wouldn't say it yet, couldn't say it, wouldn't scream his name, until she summoned hers from him again, and again and again, until she was sure she'd win this time.

It came in ragged, shuddering gasps this time, echoed around her again as she dug her hands into his hard ass, pulling him deeper and deeper, insistent, demanding, clutching and tugging until a last groan ripped through him, and he collapsed beside her. She traced her hands more delicately over his body then as she curled tightly around him, as if trying to scramble under his skin, and she willed herself to stop quivering, his name dancing on her tongue as his lips found their way teasingly around her body.

"I missed you," she whispered into his ear, smirking as her tongue followed entirely too lightly, and another moan rippled through him, while her fingers traced leisurely over his skin, outlining every beat of his heart. She missed him, first frantically, then desperately, then with a deep ache that flared every time Owen shoved his tongue down her throat, with a new excuse, a new apology, another reminder of why he would never be her forty years, could never be her forty years, since those years were already claimed.

"I missed you, too," Burke murmured, his voice rich and precise and deep, as it always had been, even after she'd left him breathless, reminding her that she'd missed every thing, the feel of his skilled hands, the curve of his shoulders, the steady pulse of his heart beneath her ear, the curves and angles of his body, as he folded seamlessly around her, as if his body had been designed and sculpted for just that purpose.

"Don't go back," she whispered harshly, clutching him again suddenly, because an inch of space had opened between them, an icy crack wide enough for it all to seep around her again, the steely eyes, and the feel of a cold metal barrel pressed against her head, and the acrid smell of smoke, and the furious beeping of the monitors, and the screams, as Gary Clark turned the gun on himself, feet in front of them.

She pulled him tighter, until she feared he might snap under the force, until she feared he might never be close enough, until his arms closed completely around her, and his chest pressed into her face, until she feared she might leave a permanent imprint, until his body closed entirely around her, and her wild trembling steadied somewhat, and the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding for well over a year suddenly rushed out in agonizing, shaking spasms, until the scream she'd been holding in for weeks pierced the darkness, echoing around them until she almost thought another heavy booted swat team would burst into the room at any moment, with another fully loaded arsenal trained upon her.

He didn't flinch, just pulled her closer, as her torrent of tears washed over him, and she clung harder, her eyes fixed vacantly on the shadows playing outside the window, until the trembling slowed further, and the last violent spasm rippled through her, and the gun shots stopped echoing through her ears, until all she heard was the steady rhythm of his breathing, and the faint beat of his heart against her, and the same whispered incantation washed over her again and again, "Cristina," in the only cadence that could matter, until the room grew warm and dark and gauzy, as she dissolved into him again.

* * *

Meredith cleared off the coffee table the following week, tossing another bouquet of dead flowers and several unopened cards into the garbage bin as she absently piled laundry on the couch. It was blanketing her house like a steady blizzard, Cristina's stuff, trailing vaguely up the stairs, until it coated even the spare bedroom like a fresh fallen snow.

It was just as well, she'd already concluded, the day they brought Alex home, because Cristina wasn't ready to return to surgery yet, and she couldn't go back to her apartment, not with reminders of Owen everywhere, and at least she kept busy lining Alex's night stand with water bottles and bandages, and littering every inch of Meredith's house, and griping about Evil Spawn as she checked off his prescriptions.

It was just as well a week later, too, Meredith imagined as she listened to Cristina grumble about Wyatt's refusal to clear her. She could have told her that she agreed with the shrink, since Cristina still wouldn't say a word about Owen, or Derek, or the slight shaking of her hands that Meredith was pretty sure Cristina thought no one else noticed, whenever she checked Alex's incision, or taped him back up.

But Meredith couldn't really mention that, either, because then she would have to answer her own questions from Wyatt, about why she wasn't badgering her to return to work herself, and how she'd manage, now that house plans had been replaced by catalogues of baby furniture. She was still fingering one of those brochures a day later, when Alex eased onto the couch beside her, almost wincing and slightly winded from the stairs.

"Long trip?" she teased, watching him roll his eyes as he glanced at the flickering television, tuned into a very late night infomercial.

"Yang snores worse then you," he grumbled, settling back into the couch and closing his eyes. "Why is she here again?"

"Owen," Meredith said softly, flipping through the glossy pages. He couldn't sleep any better then she could, she knew, Cristina's snoring not withstanding, not after the meds wore off. But it was just as well to have something else to blame.

"Um-huh," Alex nodded, his eyes fluttering open again, and settling quizzically on the open catalogue.

"I have to pick a color," Meredith muttered, as she surveyed coordinated displays of cribs and changing tables. "I'm thinking of white," she added.

"White's cool," Alex agreed, nodded sleepily, and forcing his eyes open again.

"Maple is nice, too," she replied, flipping two pages back with a studied frown.

"Makes good syrup," Alex agreed, nodding seriously, his eyes widening in a way that made her think the meds hadn't worn off completely after all.

"Are you hungry?" she prodded. "I can heat something up."

"No," he said, focusing on the television again, as she returned to her catalogue.

"What if I can't do this?" she asked quietly, several minutes later.

"Pick furniture?" he asked, scowling.

"This," she retorted, pointing to a smiling set of parents in the ad, happily settling their child into an over-sized crib.

"He was supposed to be here," she insisted. "We were supposed to do this together," she noted, her eyes blurring again. "We were supposed to pick names, and put the freaking ultrasound up on the fridge," she continued. "We were supposed to do this together," she repeated softly, tracing her finger over the picture as her eyes watered.

Alex nodded, his fingers awkwardly toying with his faded tee shirt. He didn't argue, and he didn't apologize, and he didn't tell her she'd be a perfect mother, and he didn't tell her she was worrying over nothing, and he didn't tell her everything was fine.

"I didn't even get to tell him I was pregnant," she stammered in a strangled whisper, tears welling in her eyes.

Alex nodded again, his fingers strumming the couch tentatively, inches from where she sat. He wouldn't just grab her hand, but he wouldn't pull away if she took his, and he wouldn't tell her everything was great, or that McDreamy would be so excited, or that she should be happy, or that she could tell the baby all about him someday.

"I don't know how to do this," she muttered a few minutes later, wiping at her eyes as she struggled to catch her breath.

"That set's cool," Alex noted awkwardly, pointing to the page she held open. "Kid looks happy with it," he noted, surveying the picture more closely.

"The kid's like three weeks old," Meredith smirked, wiping at her bleary eyes again. "And I wasn't talking about the furniture."

"I can build it," he said, studying the photos more closely, which were labeled assembly required in ominously bold print. "It looks like it comes partly together, anyway."

"I wanted him to be here," she whispered sadly, fingering the glossy picture again. "I wanted him to know, I wanted to tell him…"

Alex nodded again, swallowing almost audibly.

"I don't even know where to start," she muttered, shaking her head.

Taking the catalogue abruptly from her hands, Alex turned to the center page, searching out the company's phone number. "Start here," he said gruffly, pulling out the order form. "Tell them you want the stuff on page fifty seven."

"That's not exactly what I meant," she protested, rolling her eyes at him.

"Do you want him to sleep in a laundry basket or something?" Alex prodded.

"Of course not," Meredith protested.

"Then that's where you start," Alex insisted, shrugging uncomfortably.

"My baby's going to be a girl, anyway," she grumbled, filling in the order form as she prepared to call her selections in. "I can feel it."

"It's a boy," Alex insisted, leaning back into the couch again. "No way I'm living with three chicks who snore," he growled, shaking his head as his eyes fluttered shut.

"How do you know she'll snore?" Meredith demanded, eying him closely.

"Have you heard yourself?" he mumbled incredulously, almost asleep before she'd even picked up the phone.

* * *

"What do you want?" Cristina demanded a week later, rolling her eyes as Alex dropped onto the couch, sometime around three a.m.

"Shut up," he grumbled, grabbing one of the bottles and taking a swig. He didn't ask why the coffee table was lined with Tequila bottles. That would have been stupid, even if her hands weren't shaky, and she wasn't up at this hour, with the television muted in the background.

"I hate this one," she insisted, scowling at the familiar infomercial scrawling across the screen as he replaced the bottle on the table.

"We could find the remote if you weren't such a slob," he retorted, leaning back in the couch as he surveyed the heaps and piles around them. "I though you already had one of those, anyway" he growled, motioning to the infomercial she was watching, again, "up-stairs with all that other crap on Mount Yang."

She grabbed the bottle again, taking another sip before reminding him that she had two afternoon surgeries the following day, while he was still waiting for his first meeting with Wyatt. Smirking at his annoyed expression, she drew back into the couch, watching as another infomercial sprawled across the screen, as he stared blankly, struggling to stay awake as the announcer praised the merits of a combination radio and salad strainer.

"What's she want?" he muttered finally. "Wyatt."

"She wants to know how you freaking feel," Cristina snorted, drawing the words out sarcastically. She was sure it pained him to ask her, though being out of surgery was probably worse, even for a hack like him.

"Um-huh," Alex nodded, still staring at the screen with a groggy frown. They both knew that the longer he waited, the harder it'd be to get back. He needed to be cleared as soon as possible, just like she had. Surgeons understood that; shrinks didn't. Then again, all shrinks did was talk, as if talking ever fixed anything.

"Owen used to do push-ups," she volunteered a few minutes later, eying him closely. The name rolled off her tongue so casually that it almost surprised her, and would have shocked Meredith, who wouldn't mention it at all. Then again, Mere wouldn't mention Derek either, or Lexi, and Mere couldn't drink, and she couldn't do the one night stand thing, and Mere was hanging by a thread, so it was just as well she hadn't heard.

"When he couldn't sleep," she added carefully. And that said it all, why they'd broken up in the first place, why there'd never be a fucking forty years, why she was lucky she got out when she did, why she was almost grateful, when he went sniffing after Teddy.

"Did it help?" he asked hesitantly. She almost snickered, because insomnia was the least of Owen's problems.

"Sometimes," she shrugged, still staring at the flickering screen; sometimes; not nearly often enough.

"I don't miss him," she admitted quietly, in a raspy whisper. He was Evil Spawn, and they didn't talk, and she didn't talk, not even when Wyatt held her job hostage. But it pissed her off to no end, that they all tip toed around her, as if even mentioning his name would send her scurrying under the nearest gurney.

Alex raised his eyebrows quizzically, frowning slightly in her direction.

"Wyatt wants me to say that I miss him," she snapped bitterly. "But I wasn't even thinking of him when… when… I had the gun to my head."

Alex nodded again.

"Burke called," she added, almost too casually. "He wants to… he's applying for the Cardio position. He wants another shot at Chief." He wanted a lot more then that, maybe, possibly; maybe she did, too, possibly.

"Mere know?" Alex asked, suddenly puzzled.

"No," Cristina said, shaking her head. Mere couldn't know, because Burke might want more, he might want everything, and Mere couldn't take it if he left again, not after the way he left last time, not after she'd just buried McDreamy in a still fresh grave.

"Derek," she answered his next baffled glance, as if that explained everything.

"She thinks you're all screwed up over Hunt," he pointed out.

"Yeah," she agreed, nodding deliberately. "And that keeps her from being even more screwed up over McDreamy," Cristina added flatly.

"Not really," Alex noted, shaking his head with a frown.

"Yeah," Cristina agreed. "I know," she added, exhaling heavily. Meredith went willingly to Wyatt these days, and she wasn't even badgering her to get back to work, and she was obsessing over bibs and baby blankets and stupid little out fits, almost like…

"Would you try again?" she asked suddenly, "if Izzie cam back?" It was insane, really, because she'd dumped him with a tattered sheet of notebook paper, and he'd watched her die ten times over, and even he wasn't that stupid, - almost, but not that stupid.

"She's not coming back," he snorted bitterly.

"Yeah," Cristina agreed, "but if she did?" She watched his face darken, watched a frown twist his mouth, and watched his fingers twitch uncomfortably, as his hazy eyes stared blankly in front of him, until he finally nodded mutely, as if words just wouldn't come.

"Stupid feelings," Cristina agreed, handing him her bottle before taking it back and taking another long swig herself.

"And I do not have a pink Snuggie," she insisted, settling back into the couch beside him as the familiar infomercial began again.

* * *

"Dr. Altman says you're healing nicely," Wyatt announced, reading through his file as Alex sat impatiently across from her, his fingers tapping on the arm of his chair as he deliberately worked to slow his breathing and hold his tongue.

"Yeah, I'm good," Alex agreed, nodding seriously. "Ready to get back to work."

"Did you know Reed Adamson?" Wyatt asked, eying him closely, her pen poised over her own yellow notepad, waiting, he was sure, for him to make a mistake.

"We met," he shrugged casually.

"Did you know anything about her?" Wyatt pursued.

"She liked yoga," he frowned, his eyes narrowing as he met her gaze. "I told her to move in the locker room, once," he added sourly. "She was in the way."

"Did you hear anything, see anything?" she prodded. "In the supply room."

"Not really," he shrugged. They didn't count, he told himself again. The vacant eyes he saw in his sleep sometimes. They didn't count, since they were already dead, and it wasn't like anything he said could change that, and it wasn't like the hole in her head would be any less bloody, if he described it in another hundred words.

"You were found in an elevator?" she continued, glancing back over his file again. "After quite some time," she added, as if there was a question buried in there somewhere.

"Wasn't really conscious," he said flatly, shrugging again. What was he supposed to say? That it hurt like hell, as if it wouldn't? That it sucks to fight for every breath, as if you're underwater, as if you're burning and freezing at the same fucking time. That its creepy when can't see the shooter, and you're bleeding in a metal box?

"Do you remember waking up?" she continued, still surveying his initial remarks, from when she's talked with him the first time, days after his surgery.

He hesitated briefly, trying to remember what he'd told her the first time. It was all a haze, that first week, of drugs and lights and voices and monitors.

"I remember Mere," he said finally, nodding slightly. He remembered Mere's warm hands, and Yang's snark, remembered hearing that he'd be an uncle, which almost made him smile again. "Remember Dr. Altman," he added quickly.

"Did you know why you were in the hospital," she continued, "or did someone tell you about that?" He remembered the whispers and stares, the gossip among the nurses and the aides, the nervous exchanges, the bewildering backdrop to the searing pain in his chest, as if he could ever forgot.

"Altman told me," he said finally. "Told me I was fine," he added pointedly. "That the surgery had gone well," he continued, "said I'd be back in no time."

"I'm sure," Wyatt nodded, frowning herself as she scratched some comments onto his file. "And I see here that you were divorced recently, from… Dr. Stevens," she added, "the young woman who had cancer," she noted, more to herself then to him.

She looked up after a brief silence, apparently waiting for another reply, as if he was supposed to have heard a question in there somewhere. He shrugged casually, which was plainly not what she wanted, since she leveled a more curious stare at him.

"It was amicable?" she asked finally.

"We signed the forms, and I moved on," he shrugged. That had to be what Lexi was, before she'd split, moving on.

"Oh," she said. "So you'd say things are going better for you now?"

Better was relative, he assumed. Shot and divorced in the same month was crap, but it wasn't like it was much worse then all the crap that had come before, and all the crap that would follow. It was all the same basic crap, no special high-lights; it wasn't like Sports Centers' Top Ten Plays or anything.

"They will," he agreed, "when I get back to work."

"And you're specialty?" she prodded suddenly, searching back through his file again.

"Don't really have one," he said finally. Everyone had him slated toward Peads, like he was some freaking baby sitter, as if he wouldn't still be in Plastics, if Sloan weren't such a jack ass, as if he wouldn't be in Cardio, if they could keep a freaking department head, as if he might not try Neuro, if Mere hadn't monopolized all the best surgeries, or even Ortho, if Arizona Robbins weren't so freaked out about her switch hitting girl friend.

"Oh," Wyatt said, pulling another note from his file. "Dr. Bailey says you're going into Peads. I wasn't expecting that," she added, almost under her breath.

"What difference does that make, anyway?" Alex demanded impatiently.

"I'm trying to determine how likely you'll be to run into gun shot wounds during your first few weeks back," she corrected, not looking up as she continued to write. "Peads is surprisingly violent," she added casually, flipping over to the next page.

He almost laughed.

"I can speak with Dr. Bailey and Dr. Robbins," she said, "about assigning you to their service. Half time for the first six weeks," she added, eyeing him sternly, "and only if you complete every other week follow up with me."

"Follow up for what?" Alex replied, scowling. "I got shot. You're not a surgeon."

"And you're not telling me everything," she retorted. "I can keep you out entirely," she reminded him pointedly, "if I think you're not ready."

"You think I'm not ready?" he asked, almost rolling his eyes.

"I'm not sure," she said flatly. "And I have quite the case load these days, even if I'm not a surgeon," she retorted sharply.

"What else do you want?" he asked, puzzled. "I told you-"

"You told me what you thought I wanted to hear," she interrupted bluntly, her eyes meeting his forcefully. "Next time, you might try for the truth," she added.

"I'm no liar," he grumbled, glaring at her before looking away, his eyes wandering toward the fish tank that sat placidly behind her.

"No," she agreed, her tone more measured as she pulled out her appointment book. "Not to most people, you're probably not. But how about to yourself?"

Alex exhaled heavily, almost rolling his eyes again. "Take it or leave it," she said finally, "half-time for six weeks, with all the follow up appointments. Or," she added, as she wrote out her next card, "no surgeries, and you're still back here next week, anyway."

"Blackmail," he growled, taking the card from her.

"We prefer to call it positive re-enforcement," she corrected, holding out the time of their next meeting to him.

"I might not-" he started.

"That super-cedes whatever else you're doing," she interrupted, pointed to the card in his hand. "I've already spoken with Drs. Bailey and Robbins."

"Putting a gun to peoples' heads?" he smirked, still grumbling as he stalked out of her office.

"Don't tempt me," she muttered under her breath, exhaling heavily as she continued to scribble in his chart.


	2. Chapter 2

_Standard disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual._

* * *

"It's not that simple," Cristina insisted weeks later, clutching her coffee cup as the wind whipped through her hair, while the Ferry boat circled the Bay. It never had been.

"What's not that simple?" he asked, his rich baritone stilling the breeze around them, as if even it waited for him to speak.

"There's Meredith," Cristina said finally, exhaling softly, "and Teddy." The last point was ludicrous, and she didn't mention Owen or Derek, or her shaky hands.

"You're stalling," he announced bluntly, casually sipping his drink as he gazed out over the water, his serenity a jarring contrast to the waves churning beneath the boat, or maybe just beneath her, she couldn't quite tell. She had to stall him, because it was starting again, had started the first time she'd heard his voice again.

It washed over her, echoed through her; it cost her her eyebrows, once, and her pride, and a chunk of her sanity, and it was almost suicide to listen again, because the way her name rolled off his lips, Cristina, made the Yang that followed almost extraneous, as if she wasn't quite her anymore, but someone else entirely, and she wondered if that was a gift or a curse, and if that was even what he wanted, really.

"I need time," she insisted finally, setting her cup down, as she watched the spray of the water. She needed time to stop churning, actually, because it slowed to a crawl when he left, and it thundered past her in a tsunami ever since the shootings, tearing her from her moorings, and it raged around her now, running off bewilderingly in every direction.

"I have time," he noted impassively, the perfectly pressed collar of his coat standing motionless as he took another sip. The eyes were the same, his glasses, his tailored suit; the bearing, which could command forces of nature. He was done apologizing, because he was Preston Burke, and apologies were done once, and properly, and he moved forward. He was done apologizing, because she was Cristina, and he was Burke, and he knew as well as she did that she wouldn't settle for less, not again.

She almost snorted, because time was relative. It had taken him moments to call the first time, and just days to visit, something else that she still hadn't told Meredith, and it was already coming back to her: Ferry boats ride in the early morning, and coffee that wasn't just coffee, and sex in an anonymous hotel room, and the voice that echoed through her, and his hands, sculpted and skilled, as familiar to her as her own.

"My hands still shake," she reminded him, in a raspy whisper almost swallowed by the wind, a confession that could barely squeeze into words, and it could have been about the gun to her head, or the death on her table, or about all the funerals, or it could have been about how readily they stilled again, when his tapered fingers laced through hers.

She didn't pull away, though this was different, too, because coffee was coffee, and sex she gave freely, but her hands were her life, her hands were Cristina Yang, and they rested in his now, and she couldn't pull them back - not even to save her own life.

"I have time," he repeated, firm and unyielding, as if he could hold the tidal wave of minutes at bay with mere words.

* * *

"You're not serious?" Meredith asked incredulously days later, staring back at Cristina as they set their lunch trays on the table.

"What's the big deal?" Cristina asked. "He's here for an interview."

"Who?" Alex interrupted, setting his tray beside theirs as he grabbed a chair.

"Burke's back," Meredith announced, eying Alex closely as he shot a quick glance in Cristina's direction.

"You knew he was coming?" Meredith asked, directing her attention back to Cristina, who was busily unpeeling a banana.

"We've been… talking," Cristina agreed. "He called, after the shootings, just to see how things were going. We've been talking ever since."

"That was almost three months ago," Meredith noted, her eyes narrowing as she unwrapped her sandwich.

"It's not a thing or anything," Cristina replied casually, glaring in Alex's direction, as if daring him to say anything, and rolling her eyes at his bewildered expression.

"You knew about this?" Meredith demanded, turning toward him as he slurped his soda.

"He knew, alright," Cristina grumbled, motioning dismissively in his direction. "It's no big deal. Burke and I have just been… talking," she said hesitantly. "I wasn't even sure he was coming for the interview. And there's no guarantee he'll take the job."

"And you're just fine with that?" Meredith prodded. "You're fine with going back and working with him as if nothing happened?"

"We need someone in Cardio," Cristina retorted. "He won a Harper Avery," she reminded Meredith urgently. "Do you know what that means?"

"Do you?" Meredith asked hotly, recalling her friend's reaction at the time, when her own contributions to his success went unmentioned.

"That was a long time ago," Cristina shrugged. "Things change." It wasn't a long time ago, really, not on the calendar. But it was pre-shooting, which might as well have been a lifetime ago, before the future that might not be flashed urgently before her eyes, glinting off the barrel of a gun.

"Is he staying," Meredith asked quietly, "after the interview?"

"We're having dinner," Cristina replied. "Just dinner," she reiterated, almost kicking Alex under the table, since she was fairly sure that he already knew about their meeting in the on call room that morning. She had no idea how Alex knew those things, but he always did, as if he had eyes in the back of his head, and a direct link to the grapevine.

"What if he wants more?" Meredith prodded. "What if he's here to get back you back?"

"It's just dinner," Cristina snorted, glaring at Alex again, who just shoveled fries into his mouth with a grimace. "If he wants more, well… maybe… we'll see." She wasn't sure she wanted more, exactly, if more with Burke meant less of Cristina Yang, surgeon, and she wondered, when he said he'd wait, if that's what he was waiting for.

"We could go with you," Meredith volunteered, motioning to Alex to agree with her, and frowning as she met his shocked scowl.

"Like chaperones?" he snickered, almost earning an actual kick from Cristina before her pager went off.

"It's just dinner, mom" she repeated dramatically to Meredith. "I'll call if I'll be late," she added, rolling her eyes as she went off to answer her page.

"You knew?" Meredith demanded, turning back to Alex. "Why didn't she tell me? And what about Owen?"

"Moving on," Alex replied with a shrug.

"I can't believe Wyatt cleared her," Meredith muttered under her breath. "She's obviously not thinking straight."

"Maybe she just wants the guy back," he noted casually, frowning again as he chewed.

"It doesn't work like that," Meredith insisted, moving to answer her own pager. "Can you take this up?" she asked, pointing to her tray as she stood.

He nodded, still gnawing on his vegetables as she left.

"Dr. Karev," a voice stammered beside him. "Can I…?" April asked, motioning to the seat Meredith had vacated.

"Yeah, we're done," he agreed, sliding Meredith's tray under his.

"No," she said abruptly, stopping him before he could stand. "I wanted, I needed, I wanted to ask you something," she said, slipping clumsily into the seat as he watched her with a bewildered frown.

"You were with her," April started awkwardly, "with Reed, when she… when she… and I just… did she say anything?" April blurted suddenly. "Did she know? Did she-"

"What?" Alex asked, scowling and standing abruptly, his chair scraping the floor.

"I know, I know," April insisted, shaking her head. "You were shot and all," she said, motioning to his chest with a twisted grimace. "I saw you in the ICU," she continued, ignoring his face reddening. "I stopped by a few times, but you were never awake, and then Meredith said it wasn't a good time, that you didn't remember anything," she said, trying to catch her breath.

"But you're still alive, and you can talk now, and you're the last one who saw her alive, and I just wanted to know, I just wanted-" she continued, tears welling in her eyes.

"I don't remember," he snapped coldly, grabbing the trays and rushing toward the return slot, before making a bee line for the nearest ambulance bay. He stepped outside, pacing rapidly beside the empty bench, until his hands steadied and his heart rate slowed.

He didn't remember; it would all go away, the vacant eyes in his dreams, the scars under his scrubs, the sight of Mere crying on the couch, the divorce papers on his desk, Yang's shaky hands – which were way more annoying then her arrogance had ever been – even April Keppner's pleading gaze; it all went away, when he just didn't remember.

* * *

"What are you doing?" Meredith asked the following week, poking her head into the spare bedroom, where Alex was making more noise then anyone should at four a.m.

It was the spare bedroom, she reminded herself, since she didn't want to call it Izzie's old room, or Lexi's, and she wasn't ready to call it a nursery yet, even though the furniture was mostly built, and she wasn't prepared to picture it finished.

"Crib," Alex muttered, standing abruptly as he finished screwing in another slat. He'd been awake like this every night that past week, Meredith noticed; she knew the feeling.

"It's beautiful," she said quietly, running her finger across the smoothly polished white wood. "Guess page fifty seven worked," she laughed.

"Yeah," Alex agreed, smirking as he dropped a wrench into his tool box.

Meredith walked over to the window, lightly pushing the rocking chair that stood beside it back and forth.

"Try it out," Alex suggested, "pretty sure it'll hold."

"Are you telling me I'm fat?" she protested, settling into the chair as she ran a hand over her mid section. She was already at five months, and fast approaching the point where she would have to start telling people, and making arrangements for maternity leave, and planning for a life she never imagined, in more ways then she could count.

"Huge," Alex teased, rolling his eyes. "Kid's a line backer."

"She's not going to be a line backer," Meredith corrected sternly, gazing across the room at the day bed he'd finished two nights before. She didn't want to think about that either, her daughter's future, the father she'd never know; she knew that feeling, too.

"He," Alex countered, dusting off his hands and sitting back against the day bed as he surveyed the room. "Uncle's get a vote, remember," he insisted sternly.

"It's not like ordering a pizza," she laughed. "Don't they teach you anything in Peads?"

"You tell the Chief yet?" he asked, ignoring her teasing.

"I hate the new Neuro Attending," she blurted, rocking more quickly.

"Huh?" Alex asked, sure he'd missed a turn somewhere.

"She's just like my mother," Meredith grumbled, which was entirely untrue. Dr. Pender was skilled and precise, and a good manager, and she had pictures of two well-adjusted looking children on her desk, with their smiling father, and she always told them that she loved them when she hung up her phone, and her whole life made Meredith uneasy.

"You're not your mother," he reminded her tiredly, leaning his head back against the bed. He didn't do blanket assurances; that wasn't them. But he'd met the woman, and he lived in Ellis Grey's house, and he'd seen the tapes, and he'd heard the stories, and whatever else Mere was, she didn't have it in her to be her chilly, distant mother.

"I'm worried about Cristina," she said softly, ignoring his point. She was worried about all of them, because Alex was building baby furniture at four am again, and Cristina was out with Burke, again, and she still couldn't tell anyone at the hospital about the baby who would have split ends and might be the first girl line backer in the NFL.

"I'm not a chick," he reminded her, since she'd already asked once before if Cristina had said anything else to him, as if he was her freaking friend or something.

"You're in a nursery at four am," she teased, almost cringing as the word came out for the first time, almost as if bracing for a lightning strike.

"Building things," he pointed out, motioning wryly to his tool box. "That's different."

"Uh-huh," Meredith agreed, rolling her eyes.

"Are you practicing waiting up for when he's sixteen and out all night?" Alex teased, motioning with his eyes as she rocked.

"She's not leaving the house until she's twenty one," Meredith announced, peeking out of the blinds again, at the silent street below.

"That's a plan," Alex agreed, standing slowly and moving toward the door.

"I don't want her to get hurt again," she said quietly, getting up and following him to the door.

Alex nodded, shrugging casually. He could have added that it might work out this time. But neither of them believed in things working out, really, and neither of them said things just to fill silence, and neither of them had much faith in second chances, and he knew that anything he said would just bring all that up again, anyway.

"Alex," Meredith muttered suspiciously, turning toward him as she reached to the dresser near the door, which sat directly below the light switch. "This came with my daughter's furniture?" she demanded, raising her eye brows at him as she held up a small, brightly colored plastic football, labeled with all the primary hues.

"Line backer," Alex repeated, shrugging as he shut out the light and ushered her back to her room, before crawling into his own bed. They'd be leaving for the hospital again in an hour or two, just time enough for him to figure out what he'd tell Wyatt this time.

* * *

"Do you want to know what it is?" Cristina asked the following month, as she waited with Meredith for the ultrasound technician.

"I already know she's a girl," Meredith insisted, shaking her head.

"You do?" Cristina asked, raising her eyebrows.

"It's a feeling," Meredith replied, as she surveyed the equipment in the room.

"Oh, well," Cristina huffed sarcastically, "why bother with scans and blood tests when you have a feeling."

"I can tell," Meredith repeated. "You're almost as bad as Alex," she grumbled. "He's sure it's a boy."

"Has he started a pool yet?" Cristina asked, suddenly more interested.

"Don't you dare," Meredith announced ominously, as the technician entered the room and began her work. "Do you want to see?" the young woman asked cheerfully, a few minutes later. Meredith almost hesitated, because feelings were one thing, but pictures were proof, and almost made it more real, as if the nursery actually had a point.

"Okay," Meredith agreed tentatively, looking at the screen as Cristina moved closer.

"Heart looks good," Cristina noted seriously, scanning the monitors as well.

"Do you have any names you're considering, yet?" the technician asked, as she recorded the data in Meredith's chart.

"Not really," Meredith admitted reluctantly. She'd tried to imagine, sometimes, what Derek would have wanted, if he'd have wanted his mother's name, or a favorite aunt's, or something else entirely. She hadn't even decided, yet, if she'd use Shepherd or Grey, since Grey was haunted, but so was Shepherd, now, and there'd be questions either way, questions she'd never be able to answer, not even for herself.

"Well, you've got plenty of time," the woman reassured her. "The baby's very healthy," she nodded, reviewing her findings. "Do you want to know what you're having?"

"I already know," Meredith said casually.

"She had a feeeeling," Cristina muttered, drawing the word out as she rolled her eyes at the technician.

"Well, mothers' intuition is pretty good at that," the technician said, rinsing off her hands as Meredith slid off the table.

"We don't go by intuition," Cristina corrected curtly. "We're surgeons. We go by facts," she insisted, "monitors, test results, labs. We're not psychics."

"Some mothers are," the technician replied, flashing a quick smile in Meredith's direction. "It's all about being in tune with the baby."

"So now they're a band?" Cristina snickered, motioning toward Meredith and her rapidly growing girth.

"Ignore her," Meredith commented smugly to the technician, rolling her eyes. "We're on our way to lunch. She gets cranky when she's hungry."

"So do babies," the technician laughed, ushering them out the door, "maybe she's good practice."

"I'll keep that in mind," Meredith agreed, following Cristina to the elevator.

"I thought you wanted a picture of the ultrasound?" Cristina asked suddenly, as they waited.

"No," Meredith said, shaking her head. "I changed my mind." She'd considered that once, sure that Derek would like it. But she had to do things differently, now, had to get used to him not being there, and Cristina sitting beside in the exam room, and Alex building her baby furniture, and Bailey helping her pick out a car seat. She'd have to get used to a lot of things, she imagined, as she set her lunch tray down.

"Burke meeting with the board again?" Meredith asked casually. That was the rumor, that Burke was meeting regularly with the new Board members over lunch, and learning the ins and outs of the merger, and preparing to take over slowly as Richard eased into retirement. It was an opportunity Derek never got, she thought bitterly, recalling his own struggles as he moved into the job.

"Yeah," Cristina agreed. "We've got a valve replacement this afternoon," she added. "He's letting me first assist."

"You can do that in your sleep," Meredith noted, eyeing her closely. Bravado was one thing, but Cristina still didn't have her confidence back, not like before, and she doubted that Burke was helping by having her re-do simple procedures she'd done many times before. She wondered what he was up to, really, since he hadn't said much to any of them since his return, and hadn't been by the house, and hadn't eaten lunch with them, and hadn't done anything, really, except build up his department and butter up the board.

"I want it to be perfect," Cristina said shrugging. "Teddy always said it was all variations on the same basic techniques. I think she was right."

"Didn't Teddy go to state school?" Meredith taunted, raising her eyebrows.

"She overcame it," Cristina replied. "He bought a condo, too, a bigger one, in his old building."

"To host all those cocktail parties?" Meredith asked, recalling Derek's duties. He'd hated them, and she couldn't imagine Cristina playing along as the Chief's wife, or whatever the hell April had thought Meredith was, when she'd stopped being Dr. Grey all of a sudden, and became an entry on the social ledger. Cristina would loathe that even more, she was sure, if she just thought more carefully about what she was doing.

"The Board handles those, now," Cristina insisted, shaking her head.

"It gets more complicated when he's Chief," Meredith said softly, cringing as she remembered some of the last few fights she and Derek had.

"It's already complicated," Cristina reminded her. "We're… we're working on it."

"Working on it like-" Meredith started.

"Working on it like we're working on it," Cristina insisted impatiently, pulling out her pager and standing abruptly. "Gotta go," she noted, grabbing her tray.

"And no pools," Meredith called after her, grumbling as she returned to her lunch.

* * *

"We need new films, too," Alex said, rattling off several tasks to a nearby technician as April trailed behind him. He'd seen her around over the past month or so, all twitchy and nerves and always scribbling something. But at least she'd left him alone, and she just followed quietly since she'd been assigned to his cases a few days before.

She said nothing, since she'd managed to avoid him for over a month; she'd skirted the Residents lounge, and steered clear of Peads, and Meredith, and sat at the opposite side of the lunch room. She'd done everything to do avoid this, until she'd been assigned to Dr. Robbins for the week, and drew a case with him, a twelve year old boy with bone cancer.

"Did you check the labs?" he asked suddenly, and it took her a moment to realize he was asking her something, and another to realize that he was still waiting for her to open the child's file. She fumbled with the bulky binder, almost dropping her journal.

"What is that thing, anyway?" he scowled, watching as she clutched it closer to her, as if she expected him to snatch it from her.

"Nothing," she sputtered, "notes, reminders, nothing," she insisted, shaking her head as she popped the medical binder open and related the information he wanted.

"Three rounds," he noted with a frown, reading over her shoulder. That was usually the end limit for this type of cancer, she knew, and she doubted the boy would even live long enough to enter a clinical trial. It made her stomach ache, since even removing the tumor that was growing near his elbow wouldn't do him much good.

That was the oncologist's opinion as well, and Dr. Robbins', and three hours later she was following Alex into the boy's room, as they prepped him for a surgery that wouldn't really help him, much, but that was the best option among all the awful ones.

"It's bad, huh?" the boy asked, looking up at Alex as he examined his arm. He seemed to know him already, and he just watched as Alex continued his work. "Worse then last time, right?" he asked quietly. "I can tell."

"Yeah, Jake, it's bad this time," Alex agreed. "But we can take out the tumor, cast your arm, and get you back to throwing footballs again in two months."

"But the cancer's getting worse," the boy said, so matter-of-factly that April inhaled sharply. "I don't want more chemo," he insisted. "Not if it's not going to get any better."

"You don't know that," April blurted suddenly.

"I sort of do," the boy retorted, eyeing her sharply. "Dr. Benton already told me no clinical trials would take me, and what I tried before, it just didn't work."

"You talk to your parents?" Alex asked, glancing to the conference room across the hall, where they were engaged in a serious conversation with three Attendings.

"They want me to try once more," he said, nodding glumly. "Dr. Robbins doesn't think it'll work either. She promised she'd explain it to them," he said.

"She's pretty persuasive," Alex reassured him, glancing over to the conference room again as he finished his exam.

"What if it doesn't work?" he asked seriously. "Would you talk to them? You're scarier then Dr. Robbins."

"I am, huh?" Alex smirked, fingering the football on the boy's nightstand.

"Yeah," he said. "She's hot," Jake smirked back, wiggling his eyebrows.

"I'll tell her you said that," Alex noted, handing him the football. "Two months," he added firmly, directing him to work on his grip. "No excuses for throwing a sloppy spiral after that tumor comes out," he added sternly.

"No excuses," Jake agreed, running his fingers over the laces, and smirking back at Alex as he watched April leave. "She's hot, too," Jake added, nodding seriously and spinning the football in his hands.

"Is that all you think about?" Alex asked.

"That and football," Jake shrugged sheepishly.

"Good," Alex agreed, smirking back at him again as he followed April out into the hall.

She was slightly unsteady, and wouldn't look at him, and he just rolled his eyes as they reached the nurses station, where she fumbled with his chart. He hated it when they couldn't pull it together, and when they couldn't just accept that some things couldn't be fixed, even if the patients were just freaking kids.

"Dude," he started impatiently. "He's had seven years of this, he's tried everything." He hated that, too, how much time Robbins had to spend convincing the idiot parents that dragging their kid through another round of this shit wasn't going to make him fine, as if there were fucking miracles in those IV bags.

"It's not that," she insisted, shaking her head, though she still refused to look at him. "I know he's better off," she said, exhaling heavily. "It's just, he's a kid, and it just-"

"Sucks," Alex filled in, grabbing the chart and writing in his recommendations. It wasn't about that, he knew, and it'd been three days, and she still hadn't asked him even though she obviously wanted to, and it drove him freaking crazy when questions that weren't questions flashed across their faces, as if he ever had any answers, anyway.

"I'm sorry," she breathed finally. "I'm sorry," she repeated, fumbling again as another chart and a note book spilled from her arms.

"Just stop apologizing," he growled, bending quickly and pulling his hands back, startled, when she ripped the notebook from him, wide eyed, as if he might hit her with it.

"You can't see that," she blurted. "No one can see that. Well, Reed could, but she… I'm sorry," she stammered again, turning to leave.

"I didn't see anything, okay," he blurted impatiently. And he'd had it with this whole day, because Robbins was reasoning with morons, instead of telling them flat out that they were being morons, and this April chick was babbling about everything except what she really wanted, and Wyatt was still on his case – as if talking changed anything – and it was all just noise, like fingernails on a chalk board.

"Well, not much, with your friend. I heard a pop, and I walked around the corner." That was pretty much it, his whole story, and he could add that the back of her head was blown off, or that blood pooled everywhere, or that her vacant eyes stared back at him after his own chest erupted, but the details didn't change anything, any more then words did.

"And she was already-" April whispered, wide eyed again, in a way that reminded him of Reed, actually, in a way that reminded him that it could have been Mere, too, and even Yang; that it could have been all of them.

"I don't think she even felt it," he added, shrugging and turning back to his work. He didn't think she had time; he thought she was dead before she hit the ground.

"Thank you," she whispered finally, her shoulders still trembling slightly as she looked at him, still slightly bleary eyed. "I figured that, after I saw her. I just, I wanted to be sure."

"Get cleaned up," he grumbled, eying her over gruffly. "He still need labs and prep work for that tumor resection."

She nodded seriously, and he watched her walk away, and he wondered how Wyatt even had a freaking job, since she swore that talking about these things helped – so much so that his silence had earned him another three months of follow-up, minimum. But all it did was make that April chick a blubbering mess, and it pissed him off to no end, that his hands were still trembling slightly, and his breath wouldn't quite come.

* * *

"Shut up," Meredith muttered, rolling her eyes as she set her tray down and eased into her seat.

"You sure you're only six months?" Cristina asked. "Timer on that thing looks ready to pop."

"She's not going to pop," Meredith snorted, running her fingers over her ballooning maternity scrub shirt.

"He," Alex corrected, eagerly unwrapping his sandwich.

"You're rotting her brain talking to him," Cristina noted, motioning to Alex. "She should be listening to Baby Einstein DVDs, or your mother's surgery tapes."

"She's not going to medical school," Meredith insisted, shaking her head. "And she's not playing football," she added, without even looking up. "I'll be happy if I can settle on a name before she's three," she grumbled. "How about Emily?"

"Not for a surgeon," Cristina insisted, shaking her head as she ate her banana. "Not for a line backer," Alex added, digging sloppily into his salad.

"You could name her April," Cristina taunted, "after Alex's stalker."

"Is she still following you around?" Meredith giggled.

"I helped her with a few cases," he scowled. "Big deal."

"You never help anybody," Cristina said. "Unless there's sex involved. Is she trading sex for surgeries?"

"Like you?" Alex snorted, glaring back at her.

"Stop that," Meredith huffed. "Watch your language around her, or neither of you is meeting her until she's twenty one; maybe thirty five," she added, eyeing both of them.

"You're just jealous because you can't do it," Cristina taunted. "And she's horny," Alex added, nodding seriously. "I hear things, on the gynie squad."

"I am not," she snapped. "And Dr. Pender's a girl," she reminded him, rolling her eyes.

"So how are you going to keep up?" Cristina asked. "Have you talked to Webber yet?"

"Not really," Meredith said reluctantly, watching as Cristina pulled her pager out of her pocket. She couldn't, because he kept asking her how she was doing without Derek, and they were all entering a critical year for their program, and Bailey was already telling her about the day care center, and her daughter already didn't have a father, and she was already too tired to move, and the size of a small house, and she could already imagine her daughter wandering through the hospital, as if it was home.

"Well," Cristina insisted, standing abruptly and grabbing her tray, "I'm scrubbing in on a bypass. And I didn't have to sleep with anyone to get it," she added smugly, snickering at Alex as she walked off.

"Neither of you is ever meeting her," Meredith muttered, struggling out of her own seat and grabbing her tray. "Back to the pit," she grumbled, "and I didn't have to sleep with anyone to get that assignment, either," she insisted, rolling her eyes.

"Boys names," Alex muttered, still gnawing on his carrots without glancing up.

"Excuse me?" April said, staring blankly at him.

"Huh?" Alex asked, finally looking up again.

"It's mixed vanilla and chocolate," April announced, as if the lid didn't say it all, as she set the pudding cup hesitantly on Alex's tray. "I saw Dr. Grey… saw Meredith bring them to you when you were…," she stammered, motioning vaguely to his chest.

"Shot?" he asked bluntly, watching as she clutched her journal closer to her.

"Yeah," she said, shuffling her feet as she glanced at the floor.

"Did you want to sit down or something?" he asked impatiently, motioning to the empty chairs at the table.

"Oh," she said, startled, looking up and around suddenly. "Aren't they coming back?"

"They?" Alex repeated quizzically. "Oh," he added, smirking knowingly. "Yang's gone."

"She's scary," April noted, setting her tray down before cursing the words that tumbled out. She'd been hoping they'd leave, before she had to get back from lunch; she'd been watching, for three days in a row actually, since they talked a lot, his friends.

"And annoying," he agreed, returning to his sandwich.

"I just wanted to thank you," she said finally, "for your help on my cases, and for… for telling me about it."

"Not much to tell," he replied, shrugging casually.

"That's what I told Dr. Wyatt," April agreed, un-wrapping her own sandwich. "I mean, I saw Dr. Shepherd get shot, and I tripped over Reed's body, but it was all so fast," she added, staring ahead with a shudder.

"You found her?" Alex asked, looking up suddenly. "In the supply room?"

"Yeah," April said softly. "I was trying to text her at the time," she said, rolling her eyes. "We needed milk that night. We were roommates," she added, in response to his puzzled expression. "She was my best friend," she reminded him."

"You live with Meredith, right?" she asked, opening her yogurt. "I mean," she stopped suddenly, "not live with, live with, since she's like, pregnant with Der, with the Chief's, with Dr. Shepherd's baby."

"We're roommates," Alex agreed. "Yang too," he added sourly.

"I miss living with Reed," April added quietly. "She liked you, you know. Well, she thought she might like you."

"Pretty sure she hated me," Alex insisted, shaking his head.

"She said you were awesome in Peads," April corrected, shaking her head. "I could never do that. Sick adults I can handle, but sick kids all the time? I don't think I could do that."

"They handle it better then adults a lot of times," Alex remarked, shrugging again.

"Like Jake is?" she replied.

"Yeah," he agreed.

"That's good to know," she said, reaching suddenly for her pager. "Oh, I have to go. I'm on Bailey's service this week," she observed. "She's…. pretty demanding."

"We call her the Nazi," Alex smirked.

"Does she know?" April asked, wide eyed and almost aghast.

"Think she started it," Alex said, digging happily into his pudding.

"Oh," April laughed, "well, enjoy your pudding. And thanks again," she said, rushing off to meet Bailey.

"We need a name for Wyatt," he grumbled to himself, glancing at his watch, as time ticked down to his next appointment.


	3. Chapter 3

_Standard disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual._

* * *

"You didn't have to come," Meredith giggled, watching as Alex's eyes awkwardly wandered the exam room, as they waited for the ultrasound technician.

"Yang's still in surgery," he reminded her, as if that explained everything.

They were hovering, Meredith noticed, as she ran through her seventh month, and even Bailey and Richard were in on the act. It might have driven her crazy, if there weren't supplies to gather, and mile stones to research, and incessant questions about names and gender preferences, and random gift bags turning up in her locker, with baby rattles and stuffed bunnies and impossibly tiny out-fits, and even a pair of baby Keds.

"Everything looks good," the technician announced, entering the room as she leafed through the latest labs. "You still don't want to know what you're having for sure?" the woman asked, smiling at Meredith as Alex helped her off the table.

"No," Meredith replied, raising her eyebrows at Alex before he could say anything. She already knew, and she'd already told them she'd strangle them both if he and Cristina had a pool going on the side, despite their denials, and it was just his problem if his receipt expired before he got to return the little plastic football that still sat on the baby's dresser.

"Back to the Pit," she grumbled, as they walked to the elevator. That had been Bailey and Richard's not so subtle intervention. She could still work for another few weeks, but only in the pit, part time, and only supervising the new interns; what she'd do after that, they were still debating, though she'd already secured a slot in the day care center, just in case.

"You sure you should-"he started, as he glanced back at her curiously, frowning at her rapidly expanding girth.

"Yes," she insisted, sharply interrupting him. She was tried of other people supervising her, or maybe just tired, or maybe just hormonal, or maybe just surprised at how big her baby seemed to be, or maybe just cranky because she was hungry, again, and it was still two hours until lunch time, or maybe just scared, because she still didn't know what she was doing, and the Pit wasn't neurosurgery, and she hadn't worked this hard just to herd idiot interns, but she also hadn't worked this hard just to be her mother.

"You can ask April to join us, you know," she teased, distracting him as the elevator doors sealed them in. "Cristina and I don't bite."

"Huh?" he asked, looking at her suddenly, still too jittery and pale for her liking, though at least he'd stopped taking the stairs; not that she could do stairs very well with him at the moment, she reminded herself, rolling her eyes.

"April," she prodded. "You've been spending a lot of time with her. If she wants to have lunch with us-"

"She doesn't," he blurted, nervously scanning the display panel. "I mean, we've just worked a few cases together."

"She follows you around and brings you pudding," Meredith pointed out, giggling at his baffled expression. "She likes you."

"You bring me pudding, too," he pointed out, scowling. "Want to have at it right here in the elevator?" he smirked, wiggling his eyebrows at her.

"What would my daughter think?" Meredith huffed, clutching her fingers over her shirt as she slapped his arm. "Admit it," she demanded, "you like her."

"Not my type," he insisted, rolling his eyes as he waited for the elevator to reach his floor.

That was probably true, Meredith imagined, since April seemed more likely to sell Girl Scout cookies then to slit her wrists; then again, border line psychotic and dangerously unbalanced and completely unpredictable hadn't exactly worked out well for him so far, and the whole duck thing had ended before it even got started, really.

"Finally," he muttered, exhaling heavily as the elevator drew to a stop, and exiting abruptly before she could add anything.

"Lunch at one," she called after him, watching him wave his hand as she continued down to the Pit.

She spent the next few mornings there, supervising stitching and correcting charting mistakes and grumbling about how they were never that bad when they were interns and wondering how any of the first years even got into medical school. She'd just returned three charts to their correct slots when she spotted April doing an intake interview, before the young woman ordered labs and films, and left the patient to the x-ray tech.

"What you do to get stuck down here?" Meredith asked, coming up casually beside her as she pulled another chart from the stack.

"Oh," April said, turning suddenly. "Dr. Grey, Meredith, um, how are you?" she asked, her eyes widening as she took in Meredith's size. "I thought you'd be off by now."

"I still have a couple of weeks," Meredith corrected, shaking her head as she prepared to answer the same questions she'd been getting for the last month.

"I bet you're excited," April noted happily, before remembering who she was talking to. "Oh," she stammered, "I mean, well-"

"I understand," Meredith noted quickly. It was always like that, once people remembered. "And yes, I'm excited."

"You really don't know what you're having?" April asked, wide eyed and curious.

"How do you know that?" Meredith asked.

"Well, Dr. Yang's pool. I assumed you'd know, since, well, she's your friend, but-"April noted, he voice dropping off when she noted Meredith's sudden smirk.

"No," she said quickly. "I don't know yet."

"My mom had four girls," April said cheerfully. "She said she knew each time."

"I bet she did," Meredith agreed. She'd have never thought that before; she'd have agreed with Cristina, that only the monitors and labs could tell for real. She'd never have bought into a mother's intuition, either, until she'd been so sure herself.

"So," Meredith continued, still smiling slightly. "You and Alex have been spending a lot of time together."

"What?" April said, wide eyed again. "Oh, yeah, we've been working together."

"So, you're interested in Peads, too?" Meredith asked curiously.

"No, not really," April corrected reluctantly. "I've though about General, but I'm not sure. I like Dr. Robbins," though, she added half heartedly. "She's okay to work for. Why?" she continued abruptly, "did Alex, did he say something… about me?"

"Alex's not much of a talker," Meredith noted, almost giggling as she watched April's face redden, as she grew even more flustered.

"I know," April noted, nodding seriously again. "He's just, he's just… I don't know. He likes Snickers bars," she noted hopefully, "and football, and probably corn, since he's from Iowa, and he likes green, and he's pretty patient with the kids on the cancer ward, which is weird, since he's always in a hurry, and he-" she continued nervously.

"April," Meredith interrupted, trying not to laugh. "How do you know all that?"

"I write it down," she stammered, "in my journal. Like the part about Iowa, one of the nurses told me…he likes nurses, too," she added, rolling her eyes.

"Do you know if he likes you?" Meredith asked pointedly.

"Guys never like me," April admitted softly. "Reed always said it was because I'm so nervous around them. I get all tongue tied and forget things, that's why I write them down," she added seriously, "even though that probably sounds weird, too. But Reed always said it might help, and, and…she was my best friend," April finished glumly.

"Yeah," Meredith admitted, nodding slowly. She'd almost been April, if anything had happened to Cristina, or if Alex wasn't an ornery batch of crab grass.

"Well," April said suddenly, her eyes slightly bleary. "I should, I should go check on my next patient, I guess."

"April," Meredith called after her, catching up with her as the young woman watched, almost warily, as if she'd already said way too much. "He's not much a talker," Meredith said quietly. "But once you get past the scary parts, he's… he's worth it."

"Thanks," April said. "Thank you," she nodded, somewhat baffled, "and, and good luck, with the baby."

"Thanks," Meredith replied, nodding as she walked back to the nurses' station.

* * *

"Burke's coming," Cristina announced, setting her tray down beside Meredith's and Alex's two weeks later. "Don't say anything," she warned, glaring at both of them.

Those were standing instructions, had been the first two times he'd dropped by the house, too. No talking about the wedding that wasn't; no talking about the noises from the attic, where Cristina now lived, more or less, since the baby's room was finished; no talking about the nights she spent at his place, or about the rampant on call room rumors, which had already been confirmed by every branch of the SGH-MW grape vine.

"Meredith, Karev," he greeted as he set his tray down beside theirs, earning a muffled nod from Alex, as he continued devouring his lunch, and a polite glance from Meredith.

"How's the baby?" he asked politely, arranging his napkin and his plate.

"She's fine," Meredith replied cautiously. She still didn't trust her friend's judgment, not after Owen, not after Teddy, not after everything else that had happened to them, and she still wondered if pre-shooting Cristina would ever have taken him back, though really, everything pre-shooting seemed like a lifetime ago.

"She?" Burke asked, frowning as he turned to Cristina. "I thought you said-"

"She doesn't know," Cristina insisted, shaking her head as she spooned up her yogurt. "She has a feeling," she added sourly.

"Mothers know these things," Burke observed quietly, leveling a smile in Meredith's direction. They'd been friends once, Meredith remembered. She'd even taken his side, when Cristina was being irrational. He'd been good for her once, pushed her in ways Owen never had, never could – in ways she needed, Meredith imagined – if she was to get back whatever was left of pre-shooting Cristina; that had to count for something.

"Have you bet yet?" Meredith asked finally. "I hear these two have quite a pool going," she added, glaring sternly at Alex and Cristina in turn as they both paused mid chew.

"His," "Hers" came a barrage of competing accusations and increasingly heated snarking as Burke just shrugged and rolled his eyes and Meredith shook her head.

"Guys," Meredith broke in, demanding their attention. "You're both in trouble," she noted, glaring at them. "I'm seriously hormonal and on the verge of birthing a whale and tired and cranky, and I still don't have a name picked out and I can't deal with one more freaking stuffed animal and if you think you'll ever hear the end of this you're mistaken."

"Pot's over five grand," Alex noted sheepishly.

"Six," Cristina corrected, shrugging casually. "We're helping the economy."

"This is why none of you are meeting her until she's twenty one," Meredith huffed, as she returned to her lunch.

"Him," Alex noted, as he stuffed cucumbers into his mouth.

"I didn't bet," Burks added quietly, digging into his salad as Cristina and Alex both glared at him.

"Brown Noser," they muttered in unison, as Alex answered his pager and Cristina just rolled her eyes again.

"Gotta go," Alex announced, standing abruptly and gathering his tray.

"April again?" Meredith teased, watching as he returned his pager to its clip.

"What? No. Some of us actually work here," he grumbled, stalking away.

"April?" Burke asked, puzzled.

"Yeah," Cristina chortled. "He's being stalked by some over grown Girl Scout."

"She's nice," Meredith corrected, almost giggling again as Cristina made a face. "She's just a little… well…"

"Naïve?" Cristina filled in bluntly.

"She's sweet," Meredith protested. "She's… innocent," Meredith muttered, searching desperately for a euphemism for naïve, and failing miserably.

"And she's after Evil spawn," Cristina laughed, shaking her head. "That'll fix her."

"Says the fellow odds maker?" Meredith demanded, eying her sternly again. "You're betting on my baby," she pointed out.

"The kid's coming anyway," Cristina protested, earning more raised eyebrows from Meredith and Burke.

"That's the spirit," Burke agreed, smirking at Meredith again as he answered his own pager. "I'm needed in post-op," he announced, standing quickly. "Ladies," he nodded, returning his tray and striding out of the crowded lunch room.

"So this is pretty serious?" Meredith prodded, watching as Cristina suddenly fell silent.

"What happened to no questions?" Cristina asked impatiently, as she finished off her lunch and tossed her crumpled napkin onto the tray.

"I just want to know that you've given this some thought," Meredith protested. "That you're not just doing this because-"

"Because I'm horny?" Cristina interrupted sarcastically.

"Because of what happened," Meredith said quietly, "with Owen, and Derek, and-"

"It's not that," Cristina insisted, shaking her head.

"You don't miss Owen?" Meredith asked, raising her eyebrows.

"We broke up for a reason," Cristina snapped.

"Burke wasn't the reason," Meredith reminded her. "He wasn't…right?" she added, narrowing her eyes and studying Cristina closely.

"Maybe," Cristina acknowledged. "I'm not even moving in with him, not yet. But, yeah, I think, this time, maybe this time can be different."

"What if it's not?" Meredith asked quietly.

"I don't know," Cristina said finally, exhaling as she ran her hand through her hair.

"Okay," Meredith agreed, nodding silently.

* * *

"You could take her somewhere, you know," Meredith teased nearly six weeks later, sliding off the table at what she desperately hoped was her last appointment before her delivery.

"Who?" Alex asked idly, as he ushered her out to the car.

"April," she noted bluntly. "And I can still drive," she protested, as he closed the door behind her and prepared to take her home.

"You'd never fit behind the wheel," he smirked, ignoring her glare, "and that whole crazy, hormonal pregnant chick thing? Yeah, no, no driving."

"You didn't answer," she taunted. He had taken her places, she knew, well, to Joe's, and maybe to a movie or two, or six, and to dinner, and to a sporting event here or there. But he'd never call them dates, and he'd flee at the whole girl friend thing, and she imagined that April was thoroughly confused by now.

It was probably breaking several of their most long standing rules, too, her interventions into his life, but he was being a nag anyway, and April kept lists of his likes and dislikes in her journal, and she liked him, and he obviously liked her way more then he'd admit to himself for months, maybe longer, and April had consulted her several times again, to tweak the advice she'd gotten from Reed, and it would have been stalker like except that, in April's defense, Alex really should come with an instruction manual.

"We're having dinner tonight," he shrugged. "Big deal," he grumbled, as he pulled up in front of the house and walked behind her as she teetered up the steps.

Meredith knew that, actually, since April had already spoken with her that morning, briefly, while Alex was retrieving the car. She knew more about any of this then she probably should; then again, he and his fellow odds maker were gambling on her baby's vital statistics, so their lives were fair game, too.

"She's nice," Meredith commented, waddling into the kitchen and brewing some tea while he sorted through the mail.

"She's cool," he shrugged.

"Have you told her that?" she asked, almost cringing as she imagined his expression, which she didn't even need to turn around to see.

"It's no big deal," he muttered, grabbing a glass of milk and some cookies and heading for the living room.

April repeated that same point to herself, later that evening, as she invited him in to see her new apartment. Her parents had sent her the money, after Reed, after everything, and she'd bought some new furniture, too, and a nice new pot for her lush Philodendron – Phil, who she'd had since she started med school – and two other large tropical plants, and new satiny red throw pillows for the bed and everything was ready, except her.

It had to be now, she decided, it couldn't wait another day, because guys like him had expectations, because guys had expectations, and Reed would have done it by the second date, and Reed always told her to stop being so chicken and Reed would have laughed if she knew how long April had waited already and she'd read all the magazine articles that Reed had given her again and she knew from television that the key was to get undressed as fast as possible and she was sure that he'd know what to do from there and maybe it wouldn't matter if the lights stayed off.

She grabbed his hand the moment they walked through the door and locked it behind them and tugged him to the bed room and the shades were already closed – she'd run down her checklist before she left, since she liked to be prepared for everything, though she'd forgotten to turn Phil toward the window and honestly, this probably wasn't something he should see – but it was fine, it was fine until her fingers fumbled with her buttons and the zipper caught on her pants and she was trembling too hard to continue.

He caught her hands and he looked moderately bewildered though she was sure he might laugh at her if she told him the truth so she just pushed ahead and her clothes landed in a pile and she pulled awkwardly at his until they followed and it was fine again until she caught a glimpse of his scars and then she remembered the last time she'd seen Reed – and Reed would laugh at her, too, if she'd been there - and then she just scrambled under the covers, sure the room wasn't dark enough.

"I'm…I'm sorry," she stammered finally, not looking at him. "I haven't, I-"

"You've… never done this before?" he asked incredulously.

"Once," she retorted. "It…it didn't go so good," she admitted, and she couldn't tell if he was confused or disgusted or frustrated or if he just hated the floral bed spread.

"You could have told me," he growled as he groped hurriedly for his clothes. Crazy chicks he was used to, angry chicks he was used to; this was something else entirely.

"No," she protested, still clutching the blanket around her as she grabbed his wrist, before he could move. "I want to, I wanted it to be tonight, I want it to be tonight," she insisted. "I just, I really don't know…how," she admitted, her voice shaking.

"You don't have to," he snapped, trying to free his arm. He'd never said anyone had to; he might be an ass, but that was different, that was something else entirely, too.

"I want to," she insisted, gripping him tighter. She was still trembling and she probably sounded like a loon and she remembered that this was why Reed always said she'd probably die basically a virgin and she'd read all Reed's articles, too, but this was nothing like how they described anything, not when he was actually in her room for real.

"But you've never done it before," he swallowed awkwardly, meeting her startled eyes.

"I'm from Ohio," she peeped in a strangled whisper, as if that said everything. "I'm sorry," she repeated, "if you, if you don't-"

"No," he said, shaking his head, "it's okay, it's cool. It's just…"

"You don't date girls like me," she muttered glumly. No one dates girls like her, she reminded herself. That was why Reed was always pushing her to change, and why Reed left her the articles; that was why Reed always rolled her eyes at her whenever she said she thought a guy was cute, as if that would ever matter, if she couldn't get past this.

He didn't, and all the chicks he'd ever messed around with just knew how, and he'd never thought he was anybody's first anything, or even their second, really.

"I want to try," April insisted. "I want to, I want to get it right." She wouldn't look at him, couldn't look, because she should have expected this, since she wasn't pretty like the nurses, or experienced like the girls he usually went with, and she didn't know what she was doing, and he had better things to do then deal with her, and she almost wished he'd just dump her right there, the way she was sure they always would, the minute they found out everything that Reed had already known about her.

"It's not like surgery," Alex noted, frowning seriously. "Right depends. It's different for everybody." This was why he never talked about it, he remembered, as if he needed any reminders; it sounded more crazy, the more words you added.

She pulled him under the blanket with her just then, too abruptly for him to respond, and she was still trembling and her eyes were squeezed tightly shut and she could feel his skin against hers and it almost made her jump out of her own but she just couldn't be her any longer – the girl who read about it in magazines, and took notes for her journal – and she just couldn't chicken out again because then she'd be that crazy old cat lady and it was now or never because she liked him and he'd never like a girl like her if she didn't.

He pulled back abruptly, and she still looked terrified, like those chicks in the horror movies, right before they screamed, and for all the reasons chick always ended up having to hate him, this had never been one of them, at least, as far as he could tell.

"I want to," she repeated, her voice still shaking with the rest of her as she grabbed his shoulders and moved closer to him. He nodded hesitantly, his hands sliding awkwardly over her body, as she swallowed audibly. She was shivering moments later and terrified as his lips brushed her collar bone before trailing down along her torso and gasping as his warm hands closed over her breasts and quivering wildly as his fingers teased all the deep hollows between her thighs and groaning heated and breathless as her legs coiled around him, until he slid into her, smooth and deep, until a piercing shriek shattered the darkness.

She was still curled tightly around him moments later, and gasping again as he shifted beneath her, still lingering inside, and his hands roamed her body freely again and she could feel his chest pressed tightly against her, and she almost jumped as his hands skimmed her butt, which was too fat, and her hips, which were too wide, and her thighs, which were too chunky, and she was sure the room was too bright and the bedding was too far away, cast off on the floor, and she looked quickly at the open bedroom door, as if she still had a roommate, and she wondered if they'd heard her all the way in Ohio.

She was too jiggly all over, that's why Reed did all that Yoga, she imagined, and she was sure he'd bail now that he'd seen her, and her boobs were way too small under his lips, since all the girls in the magazines had implants, and her eyes rolled back in her head just then as another tsunami ripped through her and her body coiled reflexively around him and another scream erupted from within her, echoed by a shuddering groan, and he was already dozing beside her, by the time her chest stopped heaving and her head stopped spinning and her limbs stopped trembling and her heart stopped pounding in her ears.

They definitely heard them this time, she imagined as she sheepishly eyed the walls of her bedroom, the neighbors, though maybe not all the way to Ohio, and she had no idea, really, if they'd done anything like what was described in her magazines, and she just squeezed her eyes closed again and listened afterward, and it could have been minutes or hours until she opened them again, because he was still breathing beside her, and she wanted to make sure he was asleep, before she made a beeline for her clothes. She knew all about that part, since it was all about neurotransmitters and hormones and natural sedatives, like in the textbooks, and Meredith was right, that he didn't seem quite so scary from this angle, as he curled beside her, snoring softly.

The blankets were still too far away, though, and she didn't think she could retrieve them without moving and waking him, and they couldn't stay like this, she thought, glancing nervously at the open bedroom door again, and she could never sleep beside him and certainly not without her clothes and the room would just get brighter in a few hours as dawn came and she still didn't want him to see her, though really, he was a surgeon, and his hands probably told him everything already, and she wondered frantically where Reed had gotten her Yoga DVDs, and if they had some quick acting ones for beginners.

Glancing furtively at the alarm clock on her night stand, she watched the moments tick by, still too wired to sleep, since she had no idea what this meant, and too jittery to slow her heart rate, since he might wake up at any moment, and too light headed to remember everything that happened, every movement, every murmur, the way she usually tried to, when she recorded things in her journal, things she wanted to review later.

It was different for everybody, he said, though, and she'd read that, too, in her magazines, and Reed had always said you had to figure out what people liked, and she reached across to him, careful not to wake him, as she trailed her finger curiously along his skin. She almost pulled back immediately, startled, as he shifted sleepily under her touch, but he just sighed softly as she passed over his ribs, and murmured contentedly as she lightly brushed his side, and frowned slightly as she tickled him, before shifting again, and he just sort of murmured as she lingered over his hip.

She'd need diagrams, she reminded herself, and maybe notes, and more magazines, and maybe even those beginner Yoga DVDs, at least, if they'd ever do this again, that is, if she wasn't too inexperienced, if she hadn't been awful, if she hadn't been too jiggly, or too loud, or too poky, when she was tickling him. There might not be a next time, she reminded herself, because a lot of guys that Reed brought home once never came back, and Reed was experienced, and not jiggly at all, anywhere, and, she wasn't positive, but she didn't think Reed was poky, either.

There might not be a next time, she reminded herself, as another hour ticked by, and then another, and she studied the scars that lined his chest, careful not to touch them, because she was poky but not mean or rude, and it was probably wrong to stare at him while he slept, even if there might be a next time, and he probably didn't like the scars anymore then she liked her butt or her hips, but it didn't seem to bother him, really, that she was there and the blankets were still on the floor, since he still seemed pretty peaceful.

This wasn't his first time, though, she reminded herself, or even his second, or tenth; it wasn't anywhere close to that, according to the SGH-MW grapevine. He might still laugh at her, too, she reminded herself, when he woke up; he might spread it around, that she was, that she was… that she didn't know what she was doing, or that she was too loud, or that she stuttered nervously even after she'd read all the articles about what to say to guys when you were doing stuff… stuff she could never imagine anyone in Ohio doing, ever.

She was in Seattle now, though, and sun rises here weren't all that bright, nothing like the golden rays that streamed over Ohio. It was warm in her bedroom, though, even without the blankets, and she was growing drowsy and hazy and his breathing was hypnotic and his skin still brushed against her fingers and she had to go to work soon and she should have waited until the weekend to do this because she didn't want to leave and she didn't want him to wake up and her eye lids were getting heavier and she almost dozed off just then, until she noticed his eyes fluttering open.

It was another grey morning, but still entirely too bright and he could see everything and he probably caught her staring at him, too, and maybe he'd even noticed that the night before, though she was sure he'd been asleep the whole time, and she almost closed her eyes to pretend he wasn't there. Reed always said that sometimes they liked to leave before you woke, especially the ones that weren't coming back, and he was probably one of those and she waited for the door to slam but then his hand was grabbing hers and pulling her towards the bathroom. She reached frantically for the fallen bed covers but missed entirely and she wished she'd put one of those big potted plants in the bathroom to hide behind, and she cursed the clear glass shower doors as he tugged her in with him.

She cursed the sky light, too, and waited desperately for the soap to suds up and too little conditioner ended up in her hair and she gasped again as his hands ran across her body and now she was slippery and jiggly, and she wasn't' sure where things went because this was a different angle entirely and now he was slippery, too, and at least the neighbors couldn't hear her over the rushing water and then her legs were trembling wildly again and his fingers were everywhere and conditioner wasn't ever supposed to go there, probably, and she was sure she would just wash down the drain until his arms wrapped her again.

She forced her eyes open and he was smirking and dripping but he didn't look disgusted and he didn't look like she'd been too loud and he didn't seem to care that she jiggled and he just sheepishly muttered, "Cool, huh?" when she ran a finger delicately along his scar as steam billowed around them and he gasped a little, too, when her own hands traced some of the choice spots she'd noticed the night before, and he was even more ticklish in the shower then he was in her bed, though that could have been her lavender body wash.

She wondered as she dressed if her neighbors would look at her funny, and she wanted to ask him as they left together how she did, and she wanted to ask him as he drove them in to the hospital if they did any of those things in her magazine articles, and she wanted to ask him as he handed her a bagel and her favorite hot chocolate if he wanted them to do any of those things in her magazine articles, and she wanted to ask him if she should order the Yoga DVDs, until his quick kiss set her legs wobbly and her insides tingling.

She didn't get to ask any of her questions, but she wondered how people did this in on call rooms and then went right back to work, and she wondered if anyone could tell that she was different as she walked the halls, and she wondered if anyone noticed that she was still flushed and trembling, and she wondered how she'd describe this in her journal.

* * *

"Cristina?" Meredith called groggily, nearly three weeks later.

"Hey," Cristina said, taking her hand. "It went great. He's perfect."

"He," Meredith repeated excitedly, tears streaming down her face again as she watched the nurse lift her new son from the bassinet across the room, and bring him to her, placing him gently in her arms. "He's beautiful," she whispered, brushing her fingers delicately across his face, and tracing gently along the line of his little hat.

"Don't bother," Cristina noted, shaking her head seriously. "He's totally bald."

"He's amazing," Meredith cooed, watching as he yawned, his tiny fingers curling around hers as she stroked his hand.

"He is," Alex agreed, walking over from across the room, as he stuffed his stethoscope back into his lab coat. "Some lung capacity," he nodded approvingly, "and you should feel his grip."

"I do," Meredith agreed, gazing down at him again. His nose was hers, but the chin was all Derek, and she traced her fingers delicately across his soft face again, out-lining every feature, memorizing every curve and angle, and marveling at the tiny golden eye lashes as he continued to sleep peacefully, curled contentedly into her chest.

"He's a boy," she noted, still surprised.

"Uncles know these things," Alex agreed, smirking smugly.

"Then how come Bailey won the pool?" Cristina taunted, squeezing her fingers together to indicate the big pay out.

"Because the Nazi knows everything," Bailey noted, even more smugly then Alex, as she moved closer and peered down onto Meredith's son. "Does he have a name yet?" she asked, reaching down gently and touching his hand.

"I was expecting a girl," Meredith said sheepishly. "I never even thought about boys' names," she admitted, reminded again that she had no idea what she was doing.

"I'm sure you'll choose a fine name," Burke insisted, his voice rumbling from behind Christina, as he wrapped his arms around her.

"Like Prescott?" Cristina taunted, knowing full well that he stuck with Burke for a reason.

"Not one I'd recommend, no," he agreed, smiling at Meredith, before congratulating her and returning to his work, as Bailey followed him out the door for a consult.

"You know, Burke's going to want one of those, too, probably," Cristina noted sourly, motioning vaguely toward the baby.

"Tell him to get his own," Meredith insisted, cradling her son closer. "You're all mine, right," she cooed, stroking the infant's face again. "You got the car seat strapped in properly, right?" she asked, glancing back up at them.

"Yeah," Cristina nodded. "We stopped by the police station. They thought I was having a kid with him," she snorted, pointing dismissively toward Alex.

"Think they more shocked at the idea that you got somebody to knock you up," Alex retorted, smirking back at her.

"Don't listen to them," Meredith cooed, holding her baby closer and whispering into his ear. "They love each other. Just not in that way," she added, giggling.

"Drugs," Cristina muttered, scowling and rolling her eyes.

"Hormones," Alex added, shaking his head. "They really mess people up."


	4. Chapter 4

_Standard disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual._

* * *

"That was impressive," Burke commented, surveying the menu again as the light murmur of voices hummed in the background. "And would you bring your wine list, please," he asked, stopping one of the tuxedoed waiters who bustled around their table, filling their water glasses and straightening their table settings, as they prepared to order.

"It was," Cristina smirked, nodding slowly as she pictured it again, a rare double valve replacement, flawlessly completed. "You saw it?" she asked casually, eying him closely. She'd seen him observing, in the gallery, and wondered if he'd caught the fine stitching.

"I did," he agreed, completing their orders and smiling politely back at her. She was being too formal, or too coy, or too close to toying with him, and they were well past this point, he thought, or should be, or would be, if this evening proved successful.

"Teddy," she repeated, and it was back again, he thought.

"You don't need me to watch you any longer, Cristina," he said flatly, his clipped, measured tones rumbling across the table. "You've had fine teachers," he added.

"I have," she agreed, though the arrogance couldn't quite reach her lips. She'd had fine teachers, before the hospital erupted in gun fire, and her hands shook at the first whiff of antiseptic; before she stared down a gun, before she'd seen that she hadn't been ready for everything, couldn't have been ready for every thing, no matter how well she prepared.

He watched her closely, sure he caught it again, the hesitancy that had never been there before. He hadn't believed it, not of her, never of her, until he saw it with his own eyes: the slight hanging back, before stitch after stitch, the minute trembling of her fingers as the fine silk slid through them, the nanometer variations in her stitch patterns. It was excellent work, but not exceptional, not the best, not hers.

"Maybe you need a greater challenge," he prodded quietly, his tone still measured as he tasted the meal that the waiters had placed before him. It was the only way, he knew, he remembered bitterly, the only way to regain that confidence, after the one thing you could always, always count on, the rock steadiness of your own hands, betrayed you.

"Excuse me?" Cristina asked, peering up from her plate. It was still there too, the eager curiosity, the ambition, and the thirst to prove herself; it had to be here, still, he would never propose this otherwise.

"I have a bypass coming in over the next few weeks, a very complicated dissection," he said casually, smoothing his napkin.

"You want me to assist?" she asked, suddenly excited despite her self. It had all been too familiar, these past few weeks, the basic stitches, the rudimentary procedures, repeated incessantly, as if she hadn't already performed them flawlessly over and over, as if he wasn't subtly reminding her that he was Preston Burke, the renowned, award winning, Cardio-thoracic god, and her name still meant nothing. The endless review, as if she was a freaking first year intern, and didn't know her scalpel from her ass.

"I want you to do it," he said calmly, finishing his meal off and serenely sipping his wine, as her stomach plummeted into her shoes.

It was the opportunity she'd been waiting for, the opportunity she'd been dreading; she'd been ready for as long as she could remember, until she wasn't, in an instant, until she was no longer sure who she was, because she wasn't nervous finger twitches and queasy waves in the OR, and her hands did not shake, and that was the bedrock of her life.

"But, you'll be there right?" she added, forcing her voice to steady and her eyes to focus on his, as the stem of her wine glass slid between her fingers. She'd do fine, she'd do better then fine, she'd be the best, she reminded herself, but he'd be there, he'd have to.

"Of course," he agreed, as he signed the check and returned the billfold to the waiter, folding his napkin precisely, "in the gallery."

"The gallery?" she repeated quizzically. Of course: That was where she should want him, far enough away for the success to be hers; but that was too far away, because he'd been bedside her since he returned, hovering over the simplest of procedures. He must have seen them, her hands, must have noticed, that must have been why he was hovering. But he said nothing, and now he said this, and the gallery was a life time away from the OR.

"I want the Board to observe our department," he said, standing smoothly and moving to pull out her chair. "See our best students. See how we work," he added proudly.

The Board would be watching, she realized. Senior surgeons would be watching. It would be the center stage she'd craved, since she'd learned of the Harper Avery, since she swam her first lap in her parents' pool, and brought home her first A plus, and won her first trophy, and took her first step atop the awards podium, where she belonged.

"I'd love to," she agreed, following him to the lobby where they retrieved their coats. He slipped hers around her small frame seamlessly, as he had many times, and ushered her to his car, and the elegant sequined dress she wore pooled beside the plush bed moments later, and her riot of long curls flowed wildly over his shoulders, and her fingernails dug into his sculpted back, harder then necessary, and she refused to call his name, even as he shuddered beneath her, because she had time, too, and he'd call hers first, call it the way the rest of the world uttered Preston Burke, as if it was the only name that mattered.

* * *

"Hey," Alex said, squinting in the dim light as he poked his head into the nursery, where Meredith slumped on the day bed, quietly jostling her two week old son, as drying tears faded on her cheeks.

"He can't sleep," she muttered, which was technically inaccurate, since he slept fine as long as he was fed basically constantly, which could have been technically every two hours or every two minutes, since it was all blending into a hazy blur.

"Hey, Jake," Alex whispered, prying him clumsily from her arms as he dropped onto the bed beside her, "you hungry again?"

"He's a bottomless pit," Meredith insisted, gazing dejectedly at her son, as he sucked greedily at the bottle Alex offered him. It was ridiculous, but perfectly fitting, that she used supplementary formula already, because she couldn't make enough of what he needed, or make it fast enough, or tell night from day, or find a clean bib.

"He's a line backer," Alex corrected, studying him closely. "Maybe you should try protein shakes."

Meredith groaned, leaning her head back against the wall as her bleary eyes fluttered. All her books were about normal kids, average kids, kids who weren't twelve pounds at birth, and weren't eating their parents out of house and home before they cut their first teeth.

"I got him," Alex said awkwardly, shifting the baby and peeking at the rapidly dwindling formula bubbling at the bottle indicator. "I think I can keep him alive for ten minutes if you want to like… clean up or something," he noted, scowling.

"I'd fall asleep in the bathtub," she protested, her head already bobbing. "And I'd drown in the shower," she added, cutting off the inevitable commentary.

"We could join you," he smirked, "right, Jake?"

"Jacob," she corrected. "His name's Jacob. And please stop corrupting him. The last thing I need is a younger version of you."

"Hormones," Alex whispered to the baby, extracting the bottle and settling him over his shoulder.

"I heard that," she muttered, half into the mattress, as Alex popped off the bed and took the baby downstairs, turning on the television and searching for football highlights.

Placing him in the downstairs bassinet, he went into the kitchen, grabbing his own breakfast and checking to make sure the next batch of bottles was ready.

Settling back on the couch, he popped open a thick reference book, reviewing his surgeries for the next day. Robbins and Bailey had both been riding him even more then usual lately, peppering him with questions and prodding him about his bedside manner – as if Mary Poppins and the Nazi were any better – and demanding that he be more tactful, more polite, more… something, with the parents who were always in the way.

He wasn't sure what they wanted from him, really, because it wasn't like there was a good way to tell someone their kid was dying, and it wasn't like words could ever cure anything, and it wasn't like kids wanted to be lied to, and it wasn't like they were stupid, and couldn't figure out what was going on when everybody started whispering too low and smiling too hard, and it wasn't like words mattered, when the meds stopped working.

"Sorry," Meredith said tiredly a few hours later, brushing her hands through her freshly washed hair as she dropped onto the couch. "How many is that?" she asked, rolling her eyes as she watched Alex giving Jacob yet another bottle, as sports news flashed in the back ground, while Alex explained the details of something called a cover two.

"Three," Alex laughed, handing him back to her, as the baby continued to eat, blissfully undisturbed by the jostling.

"Do you think there's something wrong him?" she asked suddenly, brushing her fingers along his plump hand.

"No," he said bluntly, rolling her eyes. "His hormonal mother, on the other hand-"

"Shut up," she grumbled. "Shouldn't you be off chasing April, anyway?" she teased.

"Not my type," he reminded her, staring at the television as she eyed him closely.

He'd said that before, she remembered, but she knew they'd been spending time together, at least until recently, and she hadn't quite heard that tone before.

"Since when?" she asked, frowning when he grimaced. She might not be his type, but she kept a notebook on him, or partly on him, which was, weird, but not really crazy weird.

"What's wrong with her?" Meredith prodded, as his stony silence continued. "Come on," she teased. "It can't be that bad. Is she a serial killer? A spy? A run away rodeo clown, like your uncle? An exotic dancer? A vegetarian? A virgin?" His face reddened at that last point, and Meredith eyes flew open, before a hiccupping giggle escaped her.

"She's not?" Meredith asked incredulously. "I mean, I could believe it, I've met her, but… she's not, is she?" she asked more hesitantly.

"Not anymore," he mumbled, rolling his eyes.

"Oh, no," Meredith said, "you didn't, you couldn't, you wouldn't… you did," she said finally. "And then you dumped her?"

"No," he scowled, shaking his head. "It's not like that."

"If it was her first time-" Meredith continued.

"It wasn't," he snapped, cutting her off immediately.

"Second?" she prodded hesitantly, groaning when he nodded, grimacing. "Was it awful for her?" she asked reluctantly.

"How should I know?" he grumbled, glaring at her.

"You didn't talk to her about it?" she asked, realizing what a stupid question that was the moment it left her mouth, since he never talked about anything. "What did she do afterwards," she asked. "Was she still talking to you?"

"We had breakfast," he shrugged, "went to work. Did it again the next night. How is this any of your business, again?"

"You live here," she said flatly. "The next night, huh? And ever since?"

"Whenever we're not working, pretty much" he agreed, nodding.

"So what's the problem then?" Meredith smirked, giggling as his ears reddened again.

"Who said there was a problem?" he growled. "You know you're annoying, right?"

"And hormonal," Meredith agreed, shifting the baby in her arms and returning the bottle to the coffee table. "She's sweet, she's not nuts, she likes you, what's the problem?" she repeated, eyeing him closely. "Or is that the problem?" she added, in response to another long silence. "She really isn't your type," she added quietly.

"No," he agreed.

"And you like her, anyway," Meredith smirked, giggling again.

"She names her potted weeds," he muttered, shaking his head with a scowl, as he pictured her happily watering Phil. "And she probably likes ducks, anyway."

"She doesn't," Meredith insisted, picturing April's lists. They were weird, but she had Alex down fairly well for a beginner, and she'd managed through her first, or her second time – with him – which was no small feat, and he definitely wasn't starter boy friend material, but she wasn't exactly an ideal first girl friend either, at least, not for Alex.

"You know that how?" he snorted, watching as she stood.

"You're an acquired taste," she insisted smugly, "like strained peas. She's acquiring. Let her," she added softly. "And stop corrupting my son," she insisted, searching for a clean bib and another bottle.

* * *

"You shouldn't be here," Cristina scowled weeks later, glancing up at Meredith, who was holding Jacob as he slept peacefully in her arms. "There are like corpses all over the place," she protested, pointing around the Skills lab.

"Fake corpses," Meredith noted, wistfully fingering a stray pancreas as Cristina adjusted her equipment and began another procedure. "So you're really going to do it, huh?" she asked, watching as Cristina peered intently at the computer screen beside her.

"Of course," she scoffed, glancing back at her before returning to her work. "It's a fifth year procedure" she added proudly. "Do you know how long I've waited for a chance to try something like this? By myself?" she emphasized.

"Are you sure you're ready?" Meredith asked, juggling Jacob to her other side. Cristina didn't sound nearly as confident as she should, Meredith thought, and it wasn't like her to spend this much time going over a single procedure, or to avoid her questions. It wasn't like her to keep things from her, either, or to make the same mistake twice.

"I will be," Cristina retorted smugly. "I am," she added immediately. "Senior staff will be watching, and I'm going to rock this surgery." The words were all right, but the tone was all wrong, and she was distant and distracted, and she sounded like she was trying to talk herself into something, and they'd done this before.

"How's Burke?" Meredith asked quietly. "He hasn't come by the house lately," she pointed out casually. "Is everything going okay with him?"

"He's busy," Cristina replied, fiddling with the computer settings again. And that was probably true, but so plainly not the whole truth that it might as well have been a lie, and Cristina didn't lie well enough, not to her, to pull that off, and she wondered if they were back to their old games, and who'd blink first this time, and who'd draw first blood.

"I thought you wanted to have lunch with us?" Meredith said, shrugging as she shifted Jacob again, and turned toward the door.

"I do," Cristina said, glancing suddenly at the time and following Meredith to the cafeteria, where they joined Alex, whose nose was already stuck in a journal article.

"Hooked on Phonics again?" Cristina taunted, motioning dismissively to the Pediatric Oncology article he was reading as she set down their trays.

"You find where the plastic heart is yet?" he snorted. "I hear the Skills lab can always use an extra set of hands. Never know when a model might crack."

"Burke's letting her do a CABG solo," Meredith interrupted casually, unhooking her baby carrier and shifting Jacob onto her lap, before pulling another bottle from her bag.

"Figures," Alex grumbled, digging back into his lunch.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Cristina asked, stuffing half an orange into her mouth.

"Business as usual," Alex shrugged, scowling at her heated reaction. "You sleep with him, you get the best surgeries. Whatever."

"Not whatever," Cristina insisted, shaking her head vigorously. "I earned those surgeries. He wants the Board to see the best Cardio Residents. I'm the best," she said, motioning to herself. "He wants someone he can trust doing that surgery. He trusts me."

"He sleeps with you," Alex corrected, slurping his drink. "Doesn't mean he trusts you."

"Then why'd he ask me?" she snorted, glaring at him.

"Why did he?" Meredith asked softly. "It's not like you're the most experienced Resident he's got," she noted. "Even if you are the best," she added, rolling her eyes at Cristina's incredulous expression. "If he's just trying to impress the Board," she continued, "he could have asked-"

"He proposed, okay," Cristina blurted, glaring at both of them.

"Marriage?" Meredith said blankly.

"Shut up," Cristina snapped at Alex, before he could say anything. "Just shut up."

"Told you," he shrugged, slurping his drink again as he went back to his article.

"You knew?" Meredith asked, turning abruptly to him.

"You didn't?" he smirked, barely looking up.

"What did you say?" Meredith demanded, staring back at Cristina.

"I said… I needed more time," she said flatly, nodding after the words fell into place. "And now I'm not thinking about it. I'm thinking about my CABG. I'll ace that," she affirmed smugly, "and then I'll think about his proposal."

"Cristina-" Meredith protested.

"Look," she snapped, cutting her off. "If you don't trust my judgment, fine, I'm not even sure he does…" she blurted.

"What?" Meredith asked abruptly.

"Told you," Alex piped up from his reading, missing their tandem glares.

"But I trust me," she retorted, seething. "I'm going to ace it, me, Cristina Yang, she repeated, motioning to her hands, "and if he can accept that, fine, and if he can't, fine. But this is about me, and I'm doing this," she added, standing hurriedly and grabbing her tray. "And I don't need Preston Burke to do it," she insisted, scowling at his name and stalking away from the table.

"What was that supposed to mean?" Meredith asked, as she watched her stalk off.

"Another wedding," Alex grumbled, flipping to the next page.

"How do you know?" she demanded. "What do you know about women?"

"Know it never ends well," he muttered under his breath.

* * *

"You have to try it," April reminded him a month later, as Alex scowled at the steaming pile of – something – in the cardboard container. It looked sort of yellowish, or white like cartridge, and it smelled like, well, it smelled, and it just curled clumsily around his chop sticks and he cursed losing his latest bet, which had involved him eating something new, but not something that he was half sure was a biohazard, no matter what she called it.

"I think it moved," he scowled, poking at the steaming strings suspiciously, and half expecting them to reach out and strangle him.

"It's vegetarian," she reminded him. "Stop being a chicken."

"I like chicken," he grumbled, giving up on the chop sticks and moving on to the little plastic fork that came with their order, and chasing the stringy blob reluctantly around the plate again. "And since when are you a vegetarian?" he asked. "You grew up on a farm."

"I'm not," she corrected, struggling with her own meal and reaching for a pile of napkins. "But they don't have many ethnic street vendors in Ohio," she noted.

"You've never tried this before, have you?" he demanded, shifting around awkwardly on the park bench and looking up abruptly. He should have known, because she didn't read food magazines, but she'd try anything if it looked remotely edible, or even stuff like this, which looked like it crawled out of a space ship searching for a meal of its own.

"You lost," she reminded him, ignoring his point. Which was true, and he knew better, because besides being a pool shark, she could be a bookie if the surgeon thing didn't work out, and he knew better then to bet their food choice on a baseball game.

"Why do you know so much about sports, anyway?" he muttered under breath, his eyes almost burning as the spicy strings crawled closer to his face, or wrapped tighter around his fork, depending on how you'd describe it.

"My dad has four daughters," she reminded him. "He was always looking for someone to go to Reds games with him."

"Or Ohio State," Alex added tartly, as she giggled.

"Yeah," she agreed. "I wasn't into it at first," she admitted. "But with all of us, it was the only way I got to spend much time with him. Then I just started to like it. He was always so excited when football season started," she continued, smiling sheepishly.

"If you say go buckeyes once more," he retorted, "I'm leaving you here."

"Not for a few months," she laughed. "Is your dad a big Hawk Eye fan," she asked, "since you went to Iowa and all?"

"He wasn't around much," Alex replied cautiously. He hated lying, but she wasn't really the type to understand what he did, or why his father left, and he'd only ever told Mere and Izzie about his mom, and Mere would understand, because he'd met hers, and Izzie, well, Izzie was just a disaster, no matter how you told that story.

"Oh," she said. "They're divorced?" They weren't, exactly, though they might as well have been, but that was too much to explain, too.

"They didn't get along very well," he shrugged. "My dad was a drunk." That part she'd get, he knew, because drunks were pretty common, and needed no explanations.

"That sucks," she agreed, frowning seriously. "I guess it's a good thing he left."

"Yeah," Alex said quickly. It was, he supposed, even if his mother still hadn't forgiven him completely, and Amber didn't have a father now, thanks to him; it was better then the alternatives, he imagined, not that there had been any, really, at least, none that he could've come up, before he'd sent his dad to the hospital, and then who knows where.

"So it was just you, and your mom, and Aaron?" she asked, nibbling at her own meal and nodding approvingly. She knew about his brother, he remembered, because Aaron still called him, even months after the shootings, but Amber was more complicated.

"Pretty much," he agreed. Which was technically true, since Amber came later, and there were foster homes in between, and then he was gone, and it wasn't like it had ever been the four of them very much, and he couldn't remember if they'd ever been five, really.

"You're cheating," she insisted, looking up at him expectantly, and motioning toward the carton he was still poking warily at. "You have to actually eat it. That's why they call it gambling," she teased, laughing.

He shrugged again, cringing at the thought before deciding he might as well get it over with. Scooping up a large – hunk – of it, he raised his eyebrows smugly at her, then stuffed it into his mouth, where a riot of unadvertised spices promptly exploded, making his eyes tear and his tongue burn as he grabbed for his water bottle.

It was worse then he'd imagined, worse then could possibly be legal to sell without a warning label, worse then something Mere could cook up – which, honestly, said it all - and now its name really didn't matter because he'd checked it out on the vendor's cart and it was longer then the strings that made it up anyway and he'd never forget the sight of it, or the smell – which was worse then his first cadaver lab – and he was never, ever betting on anything with her if he survived this and her giggling just made it all worse.

"It's not that bad," she grumbled, rolling her eyes at him again as he shook his head and caught his breath, waiting for the fire to die down in his mouth. "Honestly, you like chili on your hamburgers," she protested, "and you'll eat pineapple on pizza," she grimaced. "Like this is any different?" she said, giggling again.

"You… like… this?" he gasped, staring at her wide eyed, because if she ate the rest of it he'd have to, because otherwise he'd be a wimp and she'd win more then their stupid bet, which he should never have made anyway, and she wouldn't even tell him she told him so, which would make matters worse, because even Yang's taunts were easier to deal with then April's – nice – and he just gulped down more water as his stomach growled back at him, threatening to mutiny if he ever tried anything like that again.

"Not really," she admitted reluctantly, poking at it again with a sheepish expression.

"Then why did you-?" he started.

"I told you," she insisted. "I've never lived in a city before. I want to try things. So I found out I didn't like this," she shrugged. "I don't want to go through my whole life just eating plain cheese pizza and salads and chicken and…and … corn," she grumbled.

"You always order plain cheese," he said, almost defensively. "If you didn't like-"

"You know what I mean," she interrupted, almost giggling again. "I do like plain cheese pizza," she admitted. "But I want to try stuff, too. I don't just want to eat it because that's always what I did when I was at home. I'm here, now," she shrugged, glancing warily at the cooling mass beneath her fork. "I want to try things… even if-"

"They look like this?" Alex filled in wryly, scowling suspiciously at his again.

"You want to get pizza, instead?" she asked, rolling her eyes as she met a familiar smirk.

"Kind of boring," he taunted, smirking again as she swatted him, before following her to the trash bin, and then down the street, to the pizza place where they'd played pool the week before.

* * *

"Dr. Yang," April announced, nearly two months later, drawing to an immediate halt as she hovered in front of the row of cubbies. "I didn't see you there," she mumbled, watching as Cristina sat hunched in front of her locker, pouring over a reference book. "I was just dropping something off," she said hesitantly.

Cristina nodded, barely looking up, until she caught sight of the bag April clutched beneath her journal. "For Evil Spawn?" Cristina smirked, eying the bag more closely.

"Don't tell him," April pleaded, as if it wouldn't be perfectly obvious to him, since it wasn't like anyone else in their right mind would leave him candy.

"That you're the Easter Bunny?" Cristina laughed. "It'll cost you. The Kit Kat," Cristina said firmly, holding out her hand as she surveyed April's stash.

"Oh," April said exhaling visibly relieved. "That's fine. I have plenty. I'm bringing some to the nurses, too."

"Of course you are," Cristina agreed, as she accepted the large candy bar.

"Why do you call him that?" April asked, as she placed several bars in Alex's locker. "I mean, I know you hate him and all, but that's not very nice."

"Neither is he," Cristina chortled, looking up at her. "It fits. He's Evil Spawn," she added, as if it were perfectly obvious. "He's Alex," she shrugged.

"Really?" she asked, staring curiously at Cristina's confused expression. She'd asked around a lot, when she was making her lists, and some of the nurses were mad at him, but a lot of them like him, and she imagined his ex-wife hated him, too, but that was sort of how things went with ex-anything-s, at least that's what Reed said, and they'd met his ex-wife, and she was kind of a word… only Reed used.

"Yeah," Cristina said, scowling. "He's…Alex," she repeated.

"Meredith says he's not that bad once you get past the scary parts," April said quietly.

"He's not scary," Cristina snorted, "just stupid."

"I thought you were his friend," April shrugged, "since you live with him and all. I guess not," she added, finishing her work and turning to leave.

"Hey," Cristina called after her impatiently, rolling her eyes. "What do you really want?" she demanded, folding her arms across her chest.

"I just want to know why you don't like him," April said reluctantly. "I mean, I'm not really, I've never-" she started awkwardly, wishing desperately that she still had Reed to talk to, or that Meredith had been here instead.

"I don't hate him," Cristina said, scowling.

"I thought maybe, since you were friends with his, his ex-wife-" she said.

"Izzie was scary," Cristina muttered, unfolding her arms and opening her candy bar.

"Did he," April started hesitantly, "did he- I know she was sick and all, and then she got fired, and…did he do something to her?" she asked, almost cringing.

"No," Cristina interrupted, shaking her head impatiently. "Don't you think you should ask him?" Cristina demanded, realizing how ridiculous that was the moment she said it, because he was Evil Spawn, and stupid.

"They just didn't work out," Cristina shrugged finally, as April continued to grope for words. It was like torturing a stuffed animal, or the Easter bunny, and she cringed when April handed her another candy bar, all doe eyed and innocent, and she wouldn't wish Evil Spawn on anybody, but this was more then she could take at the moment.

"He stayed with her," Cristina added quietly, running her fingers along the huge candy bar wrapper, "when she got sick. He's annoying," she grumbled, "and sloppy, and rude, and he steals surgeries," she added, scowling again "But he stayed with her when she needed him, and she left him," Cristina said quietly.

"Thanks, Dr. Yang," April said softly, awkwardly dropping another candy bar beside her as she left the room, about twenty minutes before Alex turned up.

"Your stalker left you another present," Cristina taunted, looking up abruptly from the bench in front of her locker, as she gnawed on a large Kit Kat.

"You owe me a candy bar," Alex grumbled, shoving his bag into his cubby with his jacket and pulling out his scrub top. A plain Heresy bar was stuffed in the back as well, along with a small Ohio State buck eye key chain, which he immediately returned to April's locker, very prominently hanging it upside down.

"Hey," Cristina protested, as he crossed back to his locker and pulled his sweatshirt off, shaking out his blue scrub top. "People are trying to eat here," she insisted, holding up the candy bar. "Cover that thing up," she demanded, motioning to his long scar.

"You afraid of sutures, now?" he snickered, sitting down beside her as he pulled his shirt on. "Admit it, you're just pissed that I'm still alive."

"I've always admitted that," Cristina agreed.

"Oh, scratch and sniff," he noted, nodding smugly as he looked over her shoulder, at the color coded diagram of the CABG she was performing later that week. "Since when do you cram?" he scowled.

"Since this has to be perfect," she snapped. "Better then perfect," she added, her fingers mimicking the cuts she'd have to make as she reviewed the procedure again.

"Thought you were going to ace it, impress your boy friend?" he prodded, pulling out his pager and rooting for his lab coat.

"I am, I will," she insisted. "I mean, he'll be there, in the gallery. And it will go perfectly," she repeated.

"You keep saying that," he snickered, eyeing her closely. "You don't think you can do it," he announced flatly a moment later, smirking as she looked up abruptly, still gnawing on the remains of the candy bar wrapper.

"I do too," she growled. "I mean, I will, Iam."

"Now you sound like Dr. Seuss," he taunted.

"I thought he was in Peads," she snickered, watching as he pulled on his lab coat and grabbed his stethoscope.

"Peads surgeons don't hide out in locker rooms and steal people's candy," he said sourly.

"Don't you have kids to baby sit?" she demanded impatiently.

"You really are freaked," he noted smugly, eyes narrowing again. "This should be good."

"He'll be right there," Cristina scoffed. "I won't need him anyway. But if I do, he'll be right there."

"Cristina Yang needs rescuing?" Alex smirked. "In the OR?"

"What if I do?" she said quietly, staring blankly at the diagrams again.

"Huh?" Alex asked, looking up suddenly. Yang was annoying, and crabby, and rude, and demanding, and an arrogant pain in the ass, and even a freaking candy bar thief. But she wasn't a coward.

"You've soloed already," Alex pointed out sarcastically.

"Not like this," she insisted, flipping through the pages again. She hadn't, not in front of him; not after he'd told her he expected her to do it herself; not after he'd staked his own reputation as a teacher on her work.

"Since when?" he asked, crossing his arms across his chest.

"Since McDreamy freaking died," she hissed. "It's the same basic procedure," she added, rolling her eyes. "Which you'd know, if you were an actual surgeon, and not some over grown stork."

"He got shot," Alex reminded her. "Did you miss that part?"

"I was right there, remember?" she snapped back. "I was, I was…" she stammered, leaning back on the bench and running her fingers through her hair. "I did everything right. Every step, every stitch, and he died," she said incredulously.

"You couldn't have-" Alex started, shaking his head.

"That's my job," she retorted. "To do the impossible, that's what we do," she insisted, holding her hands up again. "That's who we are." It's who she was, or it had been, back when her hands didn't shake.

"He got shot on the table," Alex said flatly. "Even you're not that good."

"I'm supposed to be," she insisted. She needed to be, because he was Preston Burke, and she wouldn't be a footnote to his name and his reputation, and she wouldn't vanish into his shadow, and she wouldn't depend on him to be known, and she wouldn't fade into the woodwork if he disappeared again, not this time, never again. She wouldn't need him this time, even if she wanted him.

"For Burke?" Alex asked, puzzled.

It was a good question; she just didn't have a good answer. "I just," she said finally, "I need to be ready."

"You will be," he grumbled, tossing his stethoscope around his neck and moving toward the door.

"Really?" she snorted. "Now you're a psychic Stork?"

"You'll rock it," he growled. "Just to piss me and Mere off."

"It would piss you off, wouldn't it?" she smirked.

"You owe me a candy bar," he grumbled, walking out of the room.


	5. Chapter 5

_Standard disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual._

* * *

"That kid sure can eat," Cristina said, dropping onto the couch beside Meredith as the baby polished off bottle number two.

"I think Alex's right," Meredith muttered, shaking her head as she settled the infant over her shoulder again. "He'll be big enough to play football in a few years at this rate."

"Doesn't he usually take this shift?" Cristina asked suddenly, scanning the room for their resident insomniac.

"He's on call," Meredith shrugged. "He's probably at April's. She lives right across the street from the hospital."

"Burke's old building," Cristina replied, nodding. "That was convenient."

"Shouldn't you be getting ready for your big surgery tomorrow?" Meredith asked. She tried not to sound envious, but she was sure it crept into her voice anyway, since it would be at least another month before she got anywhere near an OR, or possibly longer, she thought wryly, since day and night mostly passed in a blur of feeding and laundry now.

"I'm ready," Cristina smirked. "My first solo valve replacement is going to be textbook."

"I wish I could be there," Meredith replied, as she set the baby back down in his bassinet, sure that he'd sleep like a log, now that he was full. He was a lot like his uncle Alex like that, she thought with a smirk, wondering what else her son would pick up from him.

"It's only another month, right?" Cristina asked, swirling her drink in her glass as flipped through the channels, unsure of what else might be on three a.m., since usually those stupid infomercials flickered in the background.

"Yeah," Meredith agreed half heartedly, grabbing her tea and leaning back in the couch. She couldn't imagine it, really, as tired as she was, and couldn't imagine leaving him at the day care center, and couldn't imagine not operating for another month, even, and couldn't imagine how she was going to do this, all of it.

"Burke says this gives me the inside track to Chief Resident," Cristina said, settling on a travel show. "After I ace this valve replacement, he'll let me do the next aortic dissection. That's a fifth year procedure, sixth, even," she said happily.

"You sure you're ready?" Meredith asked, her eyes fluttering as she struggled to stay awake.

"Of course I'm ready," Cristina insisted, scowling at her. "Why would you even ask that?" she demanded angrily.

"I'm just asking," Meredith protested, caught off guard by her sudden vehemence. "You haven't seemed all that confident since…since…I thought maybe you were having some doubts, that's all."

"You can say it," Cristina snapped. "You don't have to-"

"Say what?" Meredith interrupted, sitting up suddenly, baffled.

"That you think I screwed up," she snapped. "That if someone else had been operating he'd still be alive; that if Burke had been here, none of it would have happened; that it's all my fault that your kid doesn't have a father; that it's all my fault that-"

"I never thought any of that," Meredith insisted sharply, cutting her off. "I was there, remember. I saw what happened. I saw Derek get shot, right under your hands. I saw… I saw all of it," Meredith muttered, exhaling heavily and catching her breath.

"It wasn't your fault," Meredith repeated quietly, staring at her own hands. "None of it was." She'd seen it all; still saw it, some nights, before she heard the baby crying, or Alex rustling around for a bottle, or Cristina searching through the laundry for a fresh bib. She saw it at the funeral, saw it at the hospital, and the grocery store, and in the car; she'd seen it a million times, enough to know that nothing could have been done.

"Then why are you so mad at me?" Cristina asked in a strangled whisper, her voice shaking, as she refused to meet Meredith's eyes.

"I'm not," Meredith insisted, shaking her head, baffled again. "I wanted you to live here, after everything. I wanted us to stay together. I wanted to make sure you were okay."

"You don't trust me," Cristina insisted, shaking her head again, and Meredith caught it just then, the doubt, the hesitation, the uncertainty that was nothing like Cristina Yang.

"Ever since Burke came back… you don't trust me," she repeated blankly.

"I think you don't trust you," Meredith corrected softly, and she wasn't sure, this time, if it was about the OR, or Derek dying on her table, or Burke, or about the wedding that never was, or about the baby that he might want, or about Owen, or Teddy, or Owen and Teddy, or about unshakable confidence that shattered amid a hail of gun fire.

"I'm a great surgeon," Cristina insisted fiercely, through gritted teeth. "I reviewed that case ever day, every day, for weeks. I just, I couldn't save him," she repeated glumly, shaking her head again.

"I know," Meredith agreed softly, eying her closely.

"I couldn't help him," she repeated, "no matter what I did."

"I know," Meredith agreed again, and it could have been Derek she was talking about, or Owen and his demons, and the answer would have been the same.

"I left him," Cristina blurted suddenly. "I left him, just like I left Burke when he got shot. I just, I can't do this, I can't-" she muttered, staring blankly at the television. "He wants to get serious again, and I just, I just can't."

"Maybe you don't trust him again yet?" Meredith asked carefully. She knew better then to bring up their long history, knew better then bring up the Owen and Teddy part of the Owen equation, knew better then to remind her that they left her, before she left them.

"I'm an awesome surgeon," she repeated forcefully, staring back at Meredith. "When I cut, I'm a rock star. But when it's personal," she continued searchingly, her voice dropping off, "I leave."

"You've helped me," Meredith protested softly. "With the funerals, with the baby, you helped Alex when he came home-"

"That's different," Cristina mumbled impatiently, frowning.

"I know," Meredith agreed, "he's Evil Spawn."

"Indestructible," Cristina muttered. "Like crab grass," Meredith echoed.

"He still needed us," Meredith reminded her. "Not that he'd ever admit it."

"Stupid boys," Cristina agreed, exhaling heavily again as she settled back down onto the couch.

"Except for Jacob," Meredith insisted, motioning seriously toward the bassinet, where her son still slept soundly. "He's perfect."

"Of course," Cristina concurred sarcastically, "even if he was supposed to be a girl."

"You can't hold the pool thing against him forever," Meredith noted sternly.

"Whatever," Cristina grumbled, crossing her arms across her chest. "What if I can't do that?" she mumbled a few minutes later, as a quieter silence settled between them.

"The kid thing?" Meredith asked, watching closely as Cristina nodded. That was a good question, actually; Meredith had wondered the same thing herself, lately, more often then she'd like to admit. "Are you even sure that's what he wants?" Meredith asked finally.

"No," Cristina admitted. "I'm not even sure if he's sure."

"You could try," Meredith cringed, "you know, talking about it. With him, I mean."

"Have you been seeing Wyatt again?" Cristina scowled, as she flipped through the channels.

"That might not be a bad idea," Meredith admitted under her breath.

* * *

Her first week back was a wild ride of sheer lunacy and utter exhaustion, as day care schedules and work shifts were juggled, and her second week back just blended vaguely into the first, or was it the third, and her head didn't clear until somewhere between Friday night and Saturday morning, as she woke with a start, peering over at the empty bassinet, as she grabbed her robe and staggered down the stairs.

Shaking her head, she glanced into the living room, where football replays flickered on the muted television, while Jacob curled quietly on Alex's chest, both dozing peacefully on the couch as an empty bottle sat perched on the coffee table, beside a half empty beer. Prying her son gently from his arms, she tried not to wake either of them, as she crossed the room and settled Jacob into the bassinet they always kept down stairs.

Alex stirred anyway, sitting up sleepily as she dropped down beside him. "Sorry," she whispered sheepishly. "I must have fallen asleep when I got home. Is April here?" she asked almost hesitantly.

"On call," Alex mumbled, shaking his head slightly and rubbing his hands across his face and trying to focus in the dim light.

"And Cristina?" Meredith asked suddenly, since she didn't remember seeing her car.

"Burke's, probably," he shrugged, leaning back into the couch, his eyes fluttering again.

She was sure the patch work schedule was driving them crazy, not to mention her son's voracious appetite, as she noted another two empty bottles near the bassinet. But she didn't want to hire a nanny, because then she'd be one of those women, and she didn't want him in day care full time, since he wasn't even three months old, really, and she didn't want to quit working again, because that would drive her batty.

"How was he?" she asked hesitantly. She'd expected the worst all day, or was it the day before, spit up all over the furniture, a mountain of bibs piled on the kitchen table, or reports of endless wailing, or complaints from the neighbors, or a possible spiked fever of mysterious origins, maybe even sudden paralysis.

"Fine," Alex shrugged sleepily. "Usual." His calm rattled her, too, because he wasn't supposed to be so relaxed, even if he was in Peads, and he wasn't supposed to be casually watching football with her son as they dozed on the couch, even if he was his uncle, and he wasn't supposed to be more confident about this then she was, even if he had almost sort of raised his own siblings for a while.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, again, and she wasn't sure if it was directed at Alex, or at Jacob, for not being a better mother, or at Derek, for not doing a better job with his son, or at her mother, because as hard as she knew this would be, she never imagined it would be this hard.

"For what?" Alex mumbled, peering at her through half open eye lids.

"I didn't mean to stick you with this," she sighed finally. "I just couldn't wake up. I could have ruined your date, or something."

"Not dating," he insisted tiredly, shaking his head.

"April seems to think you are," Meredith teased, almost giggling as she watched his eyes peel open. "She told me you saved a preemie the other day. She was very proud of you," she added, too sweetly.

"Tumor on the diaphragm," Alex muttered. "Tricky dissection, very hard core, kid could have suffocated."

"Don't remind me," Meredith said. She'd had fears of him drowning, too, and imagined a flash flood, always possible with Seattle's weather, even if her house was high up on a hill; she feared electrocution, too, even though he wasn't even close to crawling yet, but, suffocation hadn't entered her mind, not from a rare tumor, anyway.

"Huh?" he asked, looking up abruptly.

"He's going to hate me," she blurted suddenly, a few moments later, startling Alex's eyes open again, as he shot a baffled scowl in her direction. "He's going to grow up in day care," she stammered, motioning vaguely with her hands. "He'll never remember me, and then he'll go to college and never come home, and I'll never meet my grand children."

"He's four months old," Alex reminded her, rolling his eyes. "You've still got plenty of time to screw him up."

"I don't want to screw him up," she snapped. "I don't want him to be like us."

"He's not going to be like us," Alex insisted, shaking his head. "You're not your mother, and I'm not," he sputtered, "I'm not just going to…" he muttered, shaking his head again.

"I think I need to go back to part time," she said reluctantly, or almost reluctantly, since Cristina would think she was going soft, and her mother would think she was throwing her career away, and Bailey would say she needed to work harder, and she still wanted to be a neurosurgeon, and fourteen hour work days and three month old babies just didn't compute no matter how you set up the equations.

"I don't mind feeding him when I'm off," Alex reminded her, mumbling too quietly, and she almost laughed, because Alex was already spoiling him, and Alex didn't do freaking baby sitting, but Alex did bottles and bibs, and very early mornings on the couch, and silly voices when he was sure that no one else was listening, and little plastic footballs and crib building. Alex didn't do babies, period, anymore then he did dating, or Peads.

"He's too young for wrestling," she pointed out sternly, ignoring his smirk. It would still be hard, even two or three days a week, even with day care, and Alex and Cristina and Burke, and even April when she was around; she'd still be behind, too, at least by a year, as another crop of eager Residents rotated through, while she juggled scalpels and diaper bags and little jars of strained peas and green goo in her hair.

* * *

"Your work record has been excellent," Wyatt nodded, skimming through his file the following month as Alex sat impatiently, strumming his fingers on the chair and glowering at the stupid angel fish as she added more notes. Three months had become six, and six had become endless, as she poked and prodded, as if she were waiting for him to shoot up the hospital himself.

"Dr. Robbins says you're still short tempered with some of your patients' parents," she noted, and he wondered if Robbins ever told her how often the parents were the problem, and that it was his job to protect the kids from them, and that Robbins was a basket case herself, whenever the Chief was within twenty yards of her.

"She says it's getting better," he protested, echoing her comments on his last performance review, since he needed to get Wyatt off his case, and it wasn't like he was juggling a kid and all freaked out like Mere, and it wasn't like his hands still shook, like Yang's, and it wasn't like he was still up at three am all the time, except sometimes with Jacob, and it wasn't like he could let the kid starve, and it wasn't like Yang even knew which end of a bottle was up, and it wasn't like Jacob could go off to school not knowing about football.

"And the nightmares have completely resolved?" she asked, running down her list of questions.

"Yeah," he said flatly, and he wondered why she was asking him that when April had a whole scrapbook about Reed in her apartment, and April quoted her words to live by like she was freaking Yoda, and April had been the one to ask him all about her months later, as if they could change anything, and April was the one who still sent silly notes to Reed's parents, as if they needed any reminders that their kid's head had been blown off.

"And no new nervous habits," she observed more to herself then to him, and he almost snorted, because Mere twirled her hair until it came out in clumps in the bathroom, and Yang ransacked his locker looking for candy, and April wrote everything down in that little red journal, and talked to Phil and her other potted weeds, and devoured ice cream before big surgeries, and toted an Ohio State key chain everywhere just for good luck, even though their defense sucked, and their offensive line was weak that year.

"And your health," she continued, "no residual pain from your wound. The scar doesn't bother you?" And he almost laughed, again, because scars just showed you survived, and April was the one who wanted the lights out, and she'd already counted every stitch, and it must have felt okay to her, since she always ran her fingers over it like it was just there, and the only one who ever said anything about it was Yang, and she didn't count.

"It's good," he agreed, nodding impatiently again, and he wondered how anyone could complain to her about a healed gun shot wound when twelve years old were dying of cancer, and two year olds came in with broken bones, courtesy of the parents they all wanted him to suck up to, and some people had gotten their heads blown clear off.

"And you find you're relating as well as usual to people?" she prodded, and he had no idea what she wanted, because Yang was still prickly and annoying, and Mere was still paranoid about channeling her mother, and April actually named her house plants, and Robbins still eyed him sternly whenever he spoke to her switch hitting girl friend, and Mere still kept asking him about April, when he'd already told Mere that she wasn't his type, as if that weren't freaking obvious, and he still didn't believe that April could beat him that badly at pool but a deal was a deal and he owed her the drinks and the movie and he wasn't much but he paid his freaking bets off.

"And your family?" she asked. "They've handled your recovery well?" And he just stared blankly, scowling, because Yang had done his meds and bandages, and Mere had driven him to his appointments, but that was months ago, and Aaron or he called each other, and sometimes even Amber contacted him, but they'd all agreed not to tell his mother, and her meds still went out in the mail like clockwork and it wasn't lying because she was always a few missed pills away from another month on a psych ward, and Yang was still annoying and Mere was still freaked and Jacob needed another guy in the house because otherwise the girls would make him a wimp but it wasn't like any of that had anything to do with how long it'd taken him not to get winded when he walked down the stairs.

"Alex?" she prodded again, and he just shrugged because really, what was there to say. His eyes wandered from her to the clock to the fish tank to the floor and back again, and he wondered how long she could possibly keep badgering him, and how she had time to sit around like this all day, and how Psych ever got lumped in with medicine.

"What do you want?" he grumbled finally, and he wondered if she was just one of those chicks who liked questions that weren't questions, like the freaking tree in the forest, and if she'd just ask the tree how it felt, when anyone with a brain would make fire wood.

"I asked you about your family," she reminded him, flipping through his file again. "In the last year, you've been married, divorced and shot."

"Isn't that the usual sequence?" he muttered sarcastically. Not that Izzie had shot him; it might have been easier that way.

"Your divorce was mutual?" she prodded, and he just rolled his eyes as she dredged that up again, as if it freaking mattered, since they'd both moved on.

"We made a mistake," he repeated. "We fixed it." It was the same story, however you told it, same beginning, same ending; the middle never mattered.

"So you regretted marrying her?" she added, scratching something into his file, and he just drummed his fingers again, because it hadn't exactly been planned, and it hadn't exactly been a choice, and he'd never even thought about it before, until Izzie, and he hadn't thought about it since, and he'd like to keep it that way, and he had no idea how that had anything to do with his job, since he sure wasn't thinking about it in surgery.

"Yeah," he said finally, glancing at his watch, because he had things to do, and not that it mattered but it was the truth, anyway, since he'd known all along that it would never have worked out for them, and it wasn't like it took Izzie all that long to bolt, the minute she realized that forever might actually mean something besides a frilly fucking dress.

"Then why marry her in the first place?" Wyatt pressed, eying him closely, and that was another of those questions without answers, because Izzie had been dying and Mere had a dress and Izzie had dreams and her hair fell out in clumps in his hands and she might not live another week but he still wanted whatever he could have with her, and that made him fucked up in ways that didn't have labels in Psych textbooks, anyway.

"Alex?" she prodded again, and again he just shrugged, because he'd been married and then he wasn't, and she'd said she loved him and then she'd shoved that note in his locker and she'd come back and she was gone again and it always ended with her leaving, and he wished Wyatt would stop staring as his fingers strummed rapidly against the chair.

"You're still angry," she noted quietly, and he almost snorted again, because angry was loading up a gun and blowing holes in people, and angry was why Mere was a widow and Jacob didn't have a father and Yang's hands shook and April lost her best friend and he had a scar carved into his chest; that was anger.

"And you still won't talk," she noted, after another long silence, which almost made him madder, because anger didn't have words, it was fists and screaming and blood; it was fathers in emergency rooms, and mothers on suicide watch, and sisters who would never forgive you; it was just what scratched and clawed when you were fighting for your life; it was just like scars, it proved you were alive, kept you alive, when you had nothing left.

"Three more months," she nodded finally, scribbling out another appointment card for him as she made another note in his file, and not even looking up as he ripped the card from her hand, before stalking out of her office, red faced and silently fuming. "Then maybe we can get somewhere," she muttered to herself, exhaling heavily.

* * *

"Rocked it," Cristina crowed the following month, eagerly relating the details of a triple by pass, complicated by a cluster tumor, as she opened her salad. "You might as well just pencil me in as Chief Resident," she nodded approvingly, while Meredith giggled and Alex just rolled his eyes, scowling.

"Only if Burke's picking," Alex grumbled, poking at his over-cooked green vegetables.

"I'll remember that when I'm scheduling surgeries, Evil Spawn," she threatened, pointing a plastic fork at him. "You'll be seeing runny noses and splinters in your sleep."

"Cristina," Meredith interrupted, giggling again. "I'm sure Peads is more interesting then that," she teased. "It's not brain surgery, or cardio-"

"Triple organ transplant," Alex announced smugly, "on a four year old. Veins this thick," he adding, squeezing his fingers together to emphasize the narrow work field.

"Kid stuff," Cristina taunted. "Tumors over fifty seven percent of the functional heart tissue; had to bring him off by pass twice. Rock star," she repeated.

"Optic nerve," Meredith voiced again, as if that said everything, which it did, to any one who understood the relevant brain anatomy. "Restored eighty percent of the visual field; miracle worker," she insisted grandly.

"Yeah, yeah," Cristina muttered, "I'm very impressed."

"Not as impressed as April is," Meredith teased, watching as Alex's ears reddened slightly, as a twisted grimace flashed across his face. "I asked her to join us," she added, giggling again, "but she was just going into surgery."

"What," he grumbled, "you couldn't get Burke?"

"He's meeting with the Board, again," Cristina said, her eyes widening happily. "He's so going to be the next Chief."

"Don't tell April," Meredith teased again. "She'll be crushed if it's not Alex," she added, pulling her pager from her pocket. "Oh, crap," she muttered, "post op."

"No actual miracle?" Alex smirked, as he watched her gather her tray and rush off.

"Next pool on who becomes Chief Resident?" Cristina asked casually.

"Not if Burke's picking," Alex retorted.

"The Attendings will still choose, stupid," she insisted, rolling her eyes. "And he'd never choose me anyway."

"Because he's seen you cut?' Alex snickered.

"Because it would be favoritism," she snapped. "Even though he knows I'm the best Resident in the hospital."

"Right," Alex snorted, rolling his eyes again.

"Alex," April called breathlessly, coming up behind him. "Sorry, I can't stay" she added, popping a pudding cup on his tray as she kissed him. "I just wanted to let you know I'll be late tonight, sometime around eight," she said. "Hi, Dr. Yang," she greeted, buzzing off before either of them could say another word.

"She still brings you pudding," Cristina snickered. "No Girl Scout cookies?"

"You were a Girl Scout?" Alex scoffed, peeling the lid off the container.

"Were you a… boy scout?" she taunted, drawing the word out for effect.

"Seriously," Cristina continued, shaking her head as she finished her yogurt. "She's like sweet and she… delivers pudding, and you're," she insisted, motioning vaguely toward him and grimacing slightly, "so not."

"Burke doesn't bring you pudding either, huh?" he taunted.

"You must have something on her," Cristina accused, eying him closely. "You know she's a secret serial killer, and stores bodies in her apartment to practice on."

"You want in?" he smirked. "It'll cost you."

"She's too sweet," Cristina protested again. "It's all an act, she's a total sex kitten."

"Definitely," Alex agreed sarcastically, nodding as he finished off his pudding.

"She does number seventeen," Cristina muttered, peering intently at him, "in high heels, with a chair and a whip."

"Chicks really do that, huh?" he scowled, suddenly curious.

"Whips and chairs?" Cristina asked, looking up abruptly.

"You know," he muttered, "look through those magazines. Read up on what they want."

"I don't," Cristina insisted. "Well, not often," she admitted. "Not unless it's got some really good…No way," she stopped suddenly. "Little Suzy Sunshine is a-"

"No," Alex snapped. "Of course, not," he insisted, shaking his head as he gathered his tray. "She just, she…" he stalled awkwardly.

"Likes to try things," Cristina filled in matter-of-factly with a shrug.

"No," he insisted, shaking his head again. "She just… why would you do that?" he asked.

"Seriously?" Cristina stared at him, rolling her eyes. "This is that hard for you?"

"What?" he demanded, glaring at her again.

"She can't be that… you know, experienced," Cristina said, almost humoring him. "She's the girl who does the prom decorations, not the one making out behind the bleachers."

"Yang-" Alex seethed.

"I'm just saying," she interrupted, "if she knows you're that much more, experienced," she snickered, drawing the word out again, "she probably thinks she has to do that, to make you happy."

"That's stupid," Alex insisted, shaking his head as he shoved his tray into the return slot.

"She brings you pudding," Cristina reminded him sarcastically. "Why?"

"I like it," he shrugged.

"Duh, Sherlock," she muttered, shaking her head and walking away from him. "Stupid boys," she mumbled under her breath, wondering if Burk was ever that clueless, or if he was still that that clueless, really, and if he had any of those magazines at his place.

* * *

It wasn't a big deal. It was boiled water, and a handful of spaghetti, and canned sauce heated up on the stove; he could do that when he was ten, even, when Aaron and Amber were just kids. But April made a big deal out of it, like she'd never even eaten it before, and it made even less sense since he knew she liked the ice cream he'd brought better, the kind with chocolate chunks and sticky marshmallows that almost him cringe.

He'd have to lie to her, he imagined, because she made big deals out of things like ice cream, as if she hadn't blown a small fortune on Snickers bars and pudding for him, and she kept pictures of her three sisters around her place, and she'd already asked him if his father was a farmer, too, which almost popped his old suture lines, and it was just a matter of time before she was wondering about the sister he left behind.

"Hey," she said, walking into the kitchen and grabbing some plates with a smile, "smells great." She carried the dishes over to the small table, and her hair swung loosely around her shoulders and she was laughing, again, and chattering about something she'd heard on the news and helping him dig out the strainer and pulling drinking glasses down from the cupboard and telling him, again, how much Bailey and Robbins rave about him, and how happy they were to have him in Peads.

It didn't ring true, since Bailey was still the Nazi and he was always butting heads with Mary Poppins, and he wondered if she felt like she had to lie, too, and maybe she was trying too hard and maybe this was duck 2.0, since he was sure she didn't really want to do some of what she'd underlined in those magazines, and girls like her didn't do things like that – even if the magazines did come with color coded flow charts - not at all, never mind with guys like him, even if the lights were dimmed to their lowest setting.

She was still laughing two hours later, though, and she liked slap stick comedy and cheesy Westerns, like him, and he just hadn't bought that she was a football fan either until she'd recited the entire starting lineup of the previous year's Ohio State defense and he'd finally given her a pass on that because, yes, Ohio was different and she could diagram a cover two with those little M&M pieces she loved – and it wasn't like they'd ever beat Iowa – and she wasn't into Peads but at least she didn't lie about it or think it was a joke and she didn't ooh and aah over the patients like they were baby zoo animals.

It was easy to forget, then, that she was a girl like her, until she was leading him back to her bedroom again and she was still uncertain and she still tried too hard and she still paused breathlessly to turn Phil away toward the window first so that he wouldn't 'see anything' – as if he wasn't an over grown weed - and it was still too fast or too slow and he was sure she expected things that had nothing to do with her magazine articles and he wondered if she was too naïve even to realize that girls like her and guys like him didn't do those things, either, the things that girls like her always had expectations about.

"Seriously?" he asked moments later, raising his eyebrows as she pointed eagerly at number eighteen, a nervous giggle rippling through her body as he surveyed the page.

It would probably all count as lying, he imagined, even the ice cream and the boiled water, never mind what she'd just said about number eighteen and he wondered who the hell came up with these things and if they were numbered for a reason and if she even knew that some of them had seriously injured people – at least, that's what he'd heard - but then their clothes were on the floor again and she reminded him that she'd learned a few things of her own, since his eyes rolled back in his head as her fingers set to work.

"Sorry," she muttered a moment later, wincing quietly as she echoed his sharp grunt. It was still awkward and fumbling and misplaced elbows and an ill timed roll over and she still startled easily and she still froze sometimes when his hands roamed her body.

"Here," he muttered, clumsily repositioning them, and it was almost like she wanted to hide, when ever the lights were on, and she still almost cringed when he looked at her, and she still inhaled sharply whenever he grasped her hips or grazed her butt, and she still held her breath as if his skin would singe hers, if it got too close.

"That's better," she stammered breathlessly, amid a startled pause, and he wondered if this could possibly be normal, if it could be about her getting used to this, and not about him, since he never remembered any chick being this skittish; then again, chicks like her were something else entirely - and sometimes, they were downright sneaky.

"Quitter," she giggled suddenly, when she had him right where she wanted him, at least for the moment, and he was gasping for entirely different reasons just then, and he wouldn't beg no matter what she did, because that was just wrong, but she knew all the wrong spots, like she had a freaking road map or something and his eyes were borderline tearing which was even worse and loyalty was one thing but torture was something else.

"Say it." she demanded, giggling again, as her fingers plunged deeper beneath his ribs while she hovered over him and more electric spasms crackled through him and he was a doctor and he'd never actually heard of anyone being tickled to death but there were always medical oddities and he could imagine Yang laughing at his funeral and this wasn't how he ever expected to end up in the textbooks.

"Sutures," he muttered, squirming and struggling to catch his breath and she just rolled her eyes and she was all sweet and puppies and rainbows until she had him pinned.

"Say it," she insisted again, more ominously this time and his chest was seriously going to explode and her giggling was driving him crazy and her fingers slowed to a crawl which just made matters worse and some things were just unforgivable.

"Ohio State," he muttered through gritted teeth, gasping again as she raised her arms over her head triumphantly and he supposed it was better then a lecture and electricity still coursed through him and her hands moved on to the better spots then, lightly and much more tentative and it was slow and fumbling again and another startled shiver shook her as his own fingers traced a familiar path and it was sort of a variation of eighteen then but she didn't seem to notice as her limbs quivered shakily and she inhaled sharply.

"Say it," he smirked, his fingers insistently teasing her thighs as his lips hovered near her ear, kissing leisurely along her neck and collar bone and across her sternum as a familiar moan escaped her. She wasn't quite giggling by then as his fingers curled upward but it wasn't quite the startled, hiccupping gasps it'd been the first time, that accompanied his movements, as her body trembled beneath him.

"Can't hear you," he taunted, dragging his hands across her torso as he straddled her slowly, his tongue hitting just right the spot beside her ear as he slid smoothly into her, her legs locking reflexively around him. The room rattled with her long, deep shriek as he sank further inside, and he could feel her spasm around him, in almost agonizing waves, as her limbs shook violently and her body pressed tightly against his.

It was deafening then, the torrent of moans and groans and the tsunami crashing in his ears as jolt after jolt ripped through him, her hands closing around him, pulling him deeper, and it was all a dizzying haze as she rolled over on top of him and all the wrong places became all the right ones and her hands were firm and strong and the windows probably rattled around them when he finally exploded within her, his deep rumbling groan intermixing with hers, as she collapsed across his chest.

Another soft moan escaped her as she slid limply to one side, pulling him with her as he lingered inside, and her hands were too tentative again, as they traveled gently over his body, and she startled slightly as another deep groan escaped him, but she didn't avert her eyes this time, as her hands and her gaze lingered curiously on his still trembling flesh.

"Iowa," she whispered with a shy, playful smirk, and her lips were entirely too tentative, too, but in exactly the right place when they brushed his neck, and she didn't shake quite as much this time, when he drew her closer, and she didn't shrink back, when his hands slid over her hips, and she didn't quite freeze or cower or exhale sharply when his fingers idly traced the out-lines of her curves.

"Sutures, huh?" she teased, moments later, raising her eyebrows at him as she brushed her fingers delicately across his ribs again. "That's a lame excuse."

"Yeah," he smirked, sighing softly as she ran a single finger tip over each stitch line. She'd never buy that, not for a second, and it wasn't like she'd ever have to ask how he got it, and skittish as she still was, sometimes, she wasn't afraid to touch it.

"I still miss Reed," she whispered softly, still tracing her finger over his scar, and he was surprised that it sounded more like a statement then a question, more like a simple observation, then like one of those things that people said as if they were expecting an answer, when really, there was no answer to give.

"She used to tease me," she smirked, "for being…" she shrugged, "for not, well, you know," she finished, rolling her eyes.

"Like Peads," he grumbled, almost under his breath.

"That's silly," she giggled. "You're great in Peads… for a boy," she added, giggling again at his twisted grimace.

"She wanted me to do Yoga with her," she added hesitantly, more self conscious again, as she slid nervously under his hand. "So in case I ever… well, you know… well… then I wouldn't…" she paused, searching awkwardly for words before poking reluctantly at her hip to demonstrate the problem.

"What wrong with…?" he asked, poking curiously at the same spot. "Dysplasia?" he asked, frowning seriously, since he hadn't noticed any misalignment, or bowing along the joint socket, and she bent the right way.

"No," she insisted, looking strangely at him. "Reed said it shouldn't do this," she insisted, demonstrating more directly in the dimly lit room.

"I kind of like…that," he shrugged, poking at her again with another studied frown.


	6. Chapter 6

_Standard disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual._

* * *

It was just dinner, Cristina reminded herself the following month; dinner at his new condo, and possibly sex; Dinner and sex, but she wasn't staying over, not that night, and she would dress casually, despite the elegant furnishings that no doubt filled his grand new home, and she certainly wouldn't wear that red dress, because he'd think she wore it for him, and dressing for him, dressing for them, wasn't on the menu that night.

The sparkling new building was him, sleek and modern, with floor to ceiling windows, and his apartment had the exposed brick he loved, and the expensive crown molding, and the leather furniture was perfectly proportioned, and the antique rugs were pristine, and all the books on the heavy ebony built ins were probably alphabetized already, and there wasn't a pillow or a shirt or a spoon out of place; there never would be.

It all screamed Preston Burke, right down to the wine chiller, and he still talked about them sometimes, but then he bought a home that would never be her, could never be her, and he pulled out the chair for her as soft jazz played in the background, and a perfectly finished meal was placed in front of her, and she smiled politely as he poured her a fine Chablis, placing it carefully beside her perfectly appointed silverware.

They talked hearts, surgically, always surgically, and precise cuts were demonstrated on finely cooked salmon, and squabbling erupted on what kind of silk to close with, and they laughed over the foibles of the new heads of Pathology and Psych, and they were sinking into the decadently comfortable sofa, again, nearly an hour later.

She studied him closely, his hands and his lips, and his movements as he adjusted the music, reminding herself again that it was just dinner, and that just dinner, like a small ceremony at city hall, could rapidly spiral out of control; he'd left first, she reminded herself, too, after everything they'd been through, he left first.

"It's mine," Cristina insisted as he returned to his seat, more firmly then she felt. It was unthinkable that anyone else be chosen - that the Attendings select anyone else as Chief Resident. It was first place, and she was Cristina Yang, and she accepted nothing less.

"I've heard good things," he agreed, nodding again. "I've seen good things." He was pleasant and accommodating and non-commital, like he was so often these days, as if the political minefields that he navigated in his work with the Board followed him home.

"Do you know anything?" she asked bluntly. They'd danced around that question all evening, because he had an inside pipe line to the senior staff, and he had sway with the committee who made the selection, and he was Preston Burke, Harper Avery winner, and she may have taken a photograph with the man, but Burke had the hardware, and the pull that went with it – pull he never would have gotten without her.

"Not really," he said casually, rising to pour himself another drink. "I try to stay out of that. Those things are…very political," he added quietly.

That was his code, she knew, his way of telling her that she was too abrasive, too brash, and too aggressive. His tone infuriated her, because she knew it still intimidated him – she was sure of it now – her drive, her ambition, the same drive that had pushed him back to surgery, when he had all but given up on himself, on his skills, on his hands.

"I thought it was about being the best surgeon," she said sourly, almost challenging him. That's what she'd thought, she remembered, when she met him, that he wanted to be the best, that he wanted to be the center of attention at the national conferences, and the first name that came to people's lips, whenever an impossible surgery was needed. She'd thought that, once - that he was like her, and wanted the same things; now, she wasn't sure; now, she wasn't sure about anything.

"It's also about working well with people," he replied, settling down beside her again. "Especially with the merger, the Board wants people who can solve problems, manage strong personalities. It's not just about surgery." He sounded like one of those memos that circulated around the hospital when rumors of job cuts or department eliminations ran wild; one of the stupid memos that said nothing, and just fanned the flames.

"You sound like a politician," she pointed out. He sounded worse. He sounded like one of those people who tried to convince you that a bronze medal was a prize, or that coming in second was a good showing, as long as the competition was clean, or that anything but first place was acceptable, as if winning wasn't the whole point.

"That's the Chief of Surgery's job," he pointed out, eying her closely. "I can't help you, you know," he added flatly. "I can't take sides." He wouldn't take sides, but he already had, she thought, because there was only one side he should be on, and he wasn't, and he didn't even see it, and his silence told her everything.

"What do you call the CABG I did?" she demanded. "Wasn't that the point, for me to demonstrate-"

"That I was a fine teacher," he interrupted flatly, shaking his head. "I was a department head, then," he reminded her. "My job was to showcase the skills of my staff." She was still his staff, she reminded herself; it always came down to that, with them.

"You're not the Chief yet," she retorted. She didn't need him to be, she reminded herself firmly; she was the best, period, and everyone at the hospital knew that.

"No, I'm not," he agreed. "But I have my reputation to think of."

"Right," she snorted bitterly. "Do you think you'd even have a reputation without me?" she demanded harshly.

"Excuse me?" Burke replied, his eyebrows flying upwards.

"Do you think you'd have won that award without me?" she asked incredulously. "Do you think you'd even still be a surgeon without me? You were ready to quit. You were ready to throw it all away. There wouldn't be a Preston Burke without me," she spat, drawing the name out bitterly.

"You think you helped me?" he demanded, his voice rising. "The hiding, the sneaking around, the lying," he snapped venomously. "You think that helped me?"

"You had no problem lying when you accepted that award," she insisted, sitting up straighter. "You didn't even think to mention me? To thank me? To recognize what I contributed?"

"You were a student," he scoffed. "I was the teacher." Not just the teacher, she reminded herself furiously. The one who demanded the ring, and the wedding, and the church and the dress, the one who demanded she become someone else entirely, and then threw it all back in her face, in front of hundreds of witnesses, when he realized his own mistake.

"Some teacher," she scoffed. "You owe me," she hissed. "You owe me your support, at least for this," she insisted. He owed her a whole lot more then that, actually, like her eye brows, and her self-respect, and the year of her life that she spent wondering what she'd done, and what was wrong with her, and why no amount of twisting herself into a pretzel for him hadn't been good enough, and who the hell she'd be next, after he walked away.

"I thought you didn't want my help?" he spat, emphasizing the word want. "Hasn't that been the point these past few months? That the great Cristina Yang will make it on her own? That Cristina Yang doesn't need anybody?"

"I don't," she snapped coldly, rising abruptly and stalking to the hall way. She'd made that mistake once before; never again.

"Cristina," he called after her, following her as she grabbed her coat.

"No," she insisted fiercely, swirling around to face him. "No. I don't need your help. I don't need your advice," she spat at sarcastically. "I don't need anything from you," she muttered, pulling the door open abruptly and slamming it shut behind her.

* * *

"So, Meredith," Dr. Wyatt began, "it's been almost a year. How are you managing with the memorial preparations?" They were a constant buzz around the hospital grape vine, like an annoying swarm of insects, waiting to sting. She tried to ignore them, as did just about everyone else who was actually there that day. That was certainly Cristina's idea, and Alex seemed to be following suit; not that he remembered much, anyway.

"It's been fine," Meredith agreed, twisting her watch nervously. "I've been working on Derek's closet, sorting through his things, trying to decide what to save for Jacob." That was sort of true, technically, since so far she'd saved everything, except maybe the dated medical journals, and the house plans she'd tossed ages ago, when she just couldn't look at them anymore, and a ratty old sweater, which she still sort of missed.

"That's good," Wyatt agreed cautiously. "It's always good to keep things in order, when you can," she added, and Meredith wondered what she would make of Mount Yang, as Alex called the main pile of – everything – towering in Cristina's bedroom. She didn't mind, though, because it was Cristina's room, and that was all that mattered.

"And how's Jacob?" Wyatt asked cheerfully. That was a good question, one Meredith asked hourly, and she wondered how to explain that Cristina was sneaking in anatomy models with his blocks, and Alex was diagramming football plays with his peas, and April was teaching him farm animal noises, and Burke had given him a toy stethoscope, and they let him stay in the room while they played her mother's surgery tapes, and it was just a matter of time before he became another of Wyatt's projects.

"He's good," she said, nodding enthusiastically. "He's a great eater, and he hardly fusses at all, and he plays well with the other children in the day care center." She left out her vague fears that he might have an eating disorder, and that he was entirely too calm given how much time that he spent with Alex and Cristina, who didn't even play well with each other, and that most of his future sessions right in this office would he about how his evil mother left him in an over-crowded day care, and rarely visited him between surgeries.

"So what's he like," Wyatt prodded, "personality wise?' It was possibly a polite question, Meredith told herself, but any answer would just tell her that he was going to be dark and twisty, like her, because his father was dead, and his mother was a frazzled, over worked Resident, and he was growing up surrounded by doctors, which was a recipe for disaster.

"He's funny," Meredith volunteered finally, "and pretty laid back." She tried not to say anything that sounded like her, because then Wyatt would want to see him, and she tried not to say anything that sounded like Derek, because he already had Derek's chin, and Derek's eyes, and Derek's laugh, and sometimes it was just jarring, as if Derek was staring back at her, and that had to be crazy, because Derek was gone.

"Meredith?" Wyatt asked again, after another long silence.

"He's a lot like his father," she sighed reluctantly, staring at the floor between them.

"That must be comforting," Wyatt noted, more as a question then a statement.

"I can't stop thinking about him," she admitted finally. "If he'd think I was doing things right, with Jacob. If he even liked that name," she said, shaking her head as she ran her fingers though her hair. "If he'd be mad, that I'm still pursuing my Residency."

"Wasn't that always the idea?" Wyatt asked.

"We never talked about it," Meredith insisted, shaking her head again. "We talked about having kids, but nothing specific. And then he was gone, and Jacob was here, and now it's been almost a year and I still… I still don't know what I'm doing," she whispered.

"Do you still have the nightmares?" Wyatt asked, listening closely.

"Not about that," Meredith insisted, "not about that day, not anymore." She didn't, really, her nightmares were vaguer, now, about Jacob and his safety, Jacob and his future.

"Are you planning on going to the memorial service, then?" Wyatt asked, eying her closely.

"I never wanted this," Meredith sputtered finally. "I never wanted to do this on my own. I never wanted to be-" she stammered, her voice dying away.

"You didn't want to be a widow," Wyatt noted, her voice matter of fact, "but you are. You didn't want to be a single mother, but you are. You didn't want to be a Resident with a baby, but you are. Does that about sum it up," she finished bluntly.

Meredith nodded reluctantly, her eyes still fixed on the floor.

"Does your son know any of that?" Wyatt asked quietly.

"Excuse me?" Meredith asked impatiently.

"Does he know how much of your life you don't want?" she asked bluntly.

"I don't think so," Meredith said, frowning seriously.

"What does he know?" Wyatt asked, leaning back in her chair. "From his perspective, what does he know?" she prodded.

Meredith exhaled, running her hands through her hair again. He was barely eight months old; what could he know, really?

"What do you want him to know?" Wyatt rephrased.

"That I love him," Meredith said, shrugging hesitantly. "That he's safe. That he has a home."

"Do you think he knows that?" she asked, eying her seriously.

Meredith shrugged again, toying with her watch.

"How would you know?" Wyatt prodded impatiently, watching Meredith's bewildered expression.

"He smiles a lot," Meredith said hesitantly. "Cristina makes him laugh," she added slowly. "Alex spoils him," she continued, rolling her eyes. "April plays with him, and Burke reads to him, and Bailey always fusses over him, and the Chief visits him almost everyday. The day care workers always grab him right from my arms," she continued, "and his friends-"

"So," Wyatt interrupted, "you'd say he knows he's welcome in your life?"

"Yeah," Meredith agreed finally, exhaling heavily.

"What do you want him to know about his father?" she asked quietly.

"That I loved him," Meredith said hesitantly. "That he was a good man. That he would have…" she continued.

"That he would have wanted a son?" Wyatt asked softly, watching as Meredith dabbed at her eyes.

"He would have loved Jacob," Meredith said finally, tears streaking her face more freely now. "And every time I see him, his eyes or his chin or his laugh, all I can think is that he should be here, that I need him here, that we need him," she muttered, shaking her head.

"Is that all you want Jacob to know about his father?" Wyatt asked more pointedly, a few moments later. "That he should be with you, but isn't?"

"Of course not," Meredith insisted, scowling at her.

"Meredith," Wyatt said, leveling her tone. "It's been almost a year, an extraordinarily difficult year, by any measure. But Derek's not coming back, and you need to decide how you're going to manage that, not just for yourself, but for Jacob, too."

"I am managing," Meredith snapped bitterly.

"You're coping," Wyatt corrected firmly. "You're learning to tolerate your life as it is now. Is that all you want for your son, that he tolerate his life? Is that all you want for your self?"

"No," Meredith insisted angrily.

"Then how do we prevent that?" Wyatt asked seriously.

"I don't know," Meredith stammered.

"Let's talk about that next time," Wyatt said quietly, slipping another appointment card into her hand as she ushered her to the door.

* * *

It was still weird, April thought a few weeks later, as Meredith opened the door and casually invited her in, even though Alex was still stuck at the hospital. Meredith asked her in anyway, and even let her help feed the baby, and they watched part of an old movie together, until Meredith went upstairs to put Jacob to bed, and April retreated to Alex's room, where she up dated her journal before almost drifting off to sleep.

She'd never gotten this far before, not with any guy, and Reed's advice never really went much beyond the first night, and it was better then she'd said it was, and even scarier, and he still didn't seem to mind that she didn't always know what to do, and that the Yoga hadn't worked as well as she wished, and he still didn't seem to understand conditioner at all, and she'd finally stopped staring nervously at her bedroom door, though his place was another thing entirely, since people came and went at all hours and they had a baby.

She watched as a faint breeze ruffled his curtains, almost dozing until she heard quiet footsteps and saw shadows flash across the windows and felt the bed dip as he crawled in beside her. "Hey," she whispered, kissing him softly as his stubble brushed her cheek and she shivered as his hands closed around her and she toyed with the fabric of his faded tee shirt, easing it over his shoulders. Her clothes began joining his on the floor but she stopped startled when his hand closed on hers.

"What are you doing?" he asked quietly and his tone surprised her even more and she wondered if something was wrong or if she wasn't supposed to be there that night or if maybe he wanted to try something else though his eyes looked as bewildered as she felt.

"You really want to do this?" he asked curiously, and she wasn't sure if meant this as in them, or this as in number twenty seven from last year's May issue, which came with the diagram still spread on his nightstand, since they hadn't gotten it quite right last time, or this as in anything that led to their clothes in a tangled lump on the floor.

"I thought, I thought you liked it," she stammered finally, suddenly awkward again because moon light was pouring in through the fluttering curtains and his blankets were too thin and too narrow and the floor was too far away and he was looking right at her and his skin was practically touching hers and she could feel his steady pulse through her fingertips and the rhythmic movement of his chest, as his breathing sped up.

"I do," he insisted, "Do you?"

She wondered what he was talking about, because number twenty seven still made her tremble just thinking about it, even though they hadn't gotten it quite right, and she still fantasized about number fourteen way too often, and the ripple of his skin against hers still left her moaning and breathless, even if she could finally drift off beside him now no matter where the blankets were, and she didn't care about where the conditioner ended up that much because really, it didn't have quite the same effect as his hands.

"You think I don't want this?" she asked hesitantly, the words finally squeezing out as she almost cringed. He almost flinched, she noticed, and he almost pulled away, and his breath was kind of ragged and she almost wondered if this was how it ended.

"You were pretty nervous," he said finally. "You know, when we started," he added awkwardly. "And now," he said, "now you…want to try things," he continued, as he motioned vaguely toward the magazine on the nightstand. "Are you sure?" he asked skeptically, almost as if he couldn't imagine why she would.

"I thought it was fun," she stammered finally, averting her eyes as blood rushed to her face. He might have thought she was too eager, she imagined suddenly, or maybe she hadn't gotten any of them right, or maybe she was too loud after all, or maybe she was still too clumsy, or maybe she should have tried Pilates instead of Yoga, since Reed was an entirely different body type and there was only so much she could do with her genes though it wasn't her fault, exactly, that she had her mother's butt and her aunt's hips.

"You did?" he asked, in a genuinely curious voice that startled her again and he still looked somewhat bewildered when her eyes finally met his and she wondered briefly how this could be the same guy that tugged her so eagerly to the shower that first morning and she studied his face tentatively again before tracing her hand across the familiar contours of his torso, as his skin pulsed slightly beneath her touch.

"Didn't you?" she asked finally and he nodded quickly as her hands continued their travels and she caught a shy smirk as she passed over one of his favorite spots, number four, she remembered, on the list she kept in her journal, and she shivered again as his fingers sank into her flesh, and she curled around him reflexively again, even though Pilates probably wouldn't have helped much either, with the whole genetics thing and all, and the pesky moonlight was the last thing she noticed as he slid smoothly into her, as her nails dug into his back, while a roaring wave of pleasure washed over her, again.

It still wasn't twenty seven quite exactly, she decided later, still recovering her breath as he murmured softly beside her, his body still quivering as she continued her research; more like a combination of twelve and nineteen, she decided, still sprawled across his chest and trembling slightly, as his hands traced lazily along her body, his arms closing firmly around her, as his heart beat steadily against hers, while he drifted off to sleep.

She rolled carefully to one side, peering closely at the door again, wondering if anybody heard, through the walls or the open window, or if anyone even cared, since Meredith always invited her in, and Yang finally remembered her name, and the baby smiled at her, usually, and Alex just tugged her closer anyway, sighing softly as he nuzzled against her, as if they'd have plenty of time to work their way through the May issue, and even the June double length collectors edition, which came with a handy flow chart.

She listened to his breathing, slid her hand lightly along his chest, lingered gently beneath his ribs, spot number eight as long as she kept to their tickle truce, and she wondered if he kept lists, too, because he knew all her favorite places, too, and he knew to get shavings instead of chunks in her hot chocolate, and he knew what music she'd like best, and what movies to bring, and he cooked for her sometimes – though he made her promise never to tell anyone – and he tried to get her into some of the cooler Peads surgeries, even though she'd finally told him that, really, Peads was great for him, but wasn't her thing.

She wondered if that sort of made him her boy friend, because this definitely wasn't a one night thing, and if it sort of made him and her a 'them,' since she didn't really care where the bedding ended up anymore, and she didn't curse the transparent glass shower enclosure, and it was sort of just nice, how his skin slid against hers while they slept, and this still wasn't the kind of thing she could imagine doing in an on call room, really, since she'd never have the time to feel him breathe afterwards there, or to pull him closer as he lingered inside of her, or to lightly tickle spot number five, until he drifted off to sleep.

It would be totally different there, she imagined, when she woke early the next morning, since he was still sort of leaning on her and still warm and quivery and she wasn't all panicky and she knew how to untangle herself without waking him. She crept silently down the hall, then, showering quickly before returning to his room to grab her purse and leave him a note on his nightstand, since she was due at the hospital in a few hours.

She glanced curiously at the door again, though, before gathering his blankets and bundling them carefully around him, because she couldn't just leave him there like that, not all warm and quivery, not when she wasn't there, and not when she couldn't lock him in, and not when people just came and went through this house at all hours, and not when a breeze blew in through the window, and the room was growing brighter, and there were no potted plants for him to hide behind, in case someone popped in unexpectedly.

Creeping silently down the stairs, she stepped into the cherry kitchen, where Meredith was already up, feeding Jacob, while Cristina glanced absently through the newspaper spread sloppily across the table.

"Hey," Meredith called, looking up briefly as Jacob smiled and gurgled and reached insistently for the spoon. "Coffee's on the stove," she offered, motioning toward the counter where cups and mugs stood waiting.

"Thanks," April said quickly. She wasn't much of a coffee drinker, but it wasn't polite to refuse, especially not at this hour. "There's hot water, too," Meredith added, turning back again as April grabbed a mug. "The hot chocolate mix is in the second cabinet."

Nodding gratefully, April retrieved a packet, dumping the contents into the cup along with a stream of hot water, and savoring the familiar aroma.

"Good choice," Meredith noted, almost laughing as she motioned for April to sit at the table. "Cristina made the coffee," she added. "It's pretty high octane."

"Thank you," Cristina called smugly, not looking up from the classifieds.

"Do you want some, too?" April asked, motioning to her cup. "I could make you some."

"No thanks," Meredith said, shaking her head. "It doesn't go with strained carrots," she replied, rolling her eyes as she motioned to Jacob, who was almost covered in them.

"He's a great eater," April observed. "You're lucky. My sisters drove my mother crazy, they were so fussy. One of them ate nothing but beets for a month."

"Umm," Meredith said, shaking her head with a grimace. "I can't imagine that."

"Neither could my mom," April laughed, watching again as Jacob moved on to his next option, happily devouring his peaches.

"Aren't you up early?" Meredith asked, suddenly noticing the time.

"I'm due in at eight," she said, shaking her head as she glanced quickly at the clock.

"I think Alex has nights this week," Meredith replied, peering over at the master schedule on the refrigerator. "It's a juggling act," she added, "with getting Jacob to day care and all."

"Yeah," April agreed, wide eyed. "I don't think I could do it. I saw what my mom went through with me and my sisters; she had four of us."

"One is almost over-whelming sometimes," Meredith agreed, smiling back at Jacob as he savored his breakfast. "But I'd never go back," she added quietly. "Now that I have him, I can't imagine what it would be like not to."

"I think that's how my mom felt, too," April said. "But she might not have thought that all the time," she added wryly.

"Does this bother you?" Meredith asked quietly, suddenly growing more serious. "You know, that Alex helps me out with the baby and all."

"So do I," Cristina piped up, scooping up the paper and moving to the living room.

"No," April said hesitantly, nervously watching Cristina leave. "He likes kids. He's a good friend. I don't mind."

"Something's bothering you, though," Meredith prodded, watching her closely. "It's bothering him, too; has been for a few weeks, now."

"He said something to you?" April asked, wide eyed again.

"Alex doesn't talk much," she reminded her. "He taps his pen when he's worried," she added. "And he doesn't insult Cristina as enthusiastically, and he leaves French fries on his plate at lunch," she continued, "but he eats more vegetables, I don't know why."

"He was weird last night," April admitted finally, her face reddening, "before we, before we-" she continued.

"I got the idea," Meredith interrupted, wondering if she already had way too much information.

"He asked me if I really wanted to," April said, bewildered and baffled again. "Like, if I was sure. I thought maybe… maybe he didn't want to be my boyfriend or-"

"Did you tell him that?" Meredith asked abruptly.

"No," April said finally. "I don't even know if he is, really," she added. "I've never had one before," she admitted, her face reddening again as she averted her eyes. "Not like this. Reed always said… well, Reed's not here anymore," she added glumly.

"Would you mind if I made a suggestion," Meredith asked finally, "just between us?"

April shook her head, still wide eyed and serious.

"Alex doesn't baby sit," Meredith noted, almost laughing at her startled expression. "I mean, he'll feed Jacob, and play with him, and take him to day care for me, and they watch way too much football together," she added, rolling her eyes. "But baby sitting isn't something he'd do. He doesn't do the boyfriend thing, either," she added. "Does that make sense?"

"Sort of," April agreed hesitantly. "You mean he does… boy friend-y things with me, I think. But he wouldn't call it that," she said slowly. "That's-"

"Stupid," Meredith agreed, "unless you know him."

"I guess I don't," April shrugged reluctantly.

"No, you do," Meredith corrected her, almost laughing again as she recalled all her journal lists and entries. "You just have to know how to tell him."

"That he's my boyfriend?" April asked, baffled.

"He'll deny it at first," Meredith agreed, nodded. "Then he'll avoid you, if you let him."

"Should I?" April asked seriously, "let him…?"

""You have to decide that for yourself," Meredith said. "But he likes you, you know," she noted softly, pausing briefly beside her and lowering her voice.

"Yeah," she said quietly, smiling shyly again. "I think, I think he does."

"Careful," Meredith interrupted. "I've already heard too much. Bad enough my son is growing up in a brothel."

"Oh no," April muttered, her hands flying over her mouth as she almost dropped her cup. "Oh no, oh no, I'm so sorry, last night, did you, did you… hear anything last night?" she asked, almost cringing as her face flushed red again.

"April," Meredith laughed. "It's okay. No, I didn't hear anything. That's been a running joke about my house for as long as I can remember. Honestly, as long as Jacob's asleep, I'm probably out cold too," she said.

"Okay, okay," April breathed, exhaling heavily and trying to slow her heart rate. "It's just, I was trying to be quiet, and-"

"Try harder," Cristina grumbled, walking back into the kitchen as she grabbed for her keys. "I mean, the being quite part," she add, smirking smugly. "Sex kitten."

"Oh, no," April sputtered, her hands flying over her mouth again.

"Too much information," Meredith noted again, pulling off Jacob's bib and pulling him out of his seat as Cristina strolled out the door, chortling.

* * *

"I didn't hear him," Meredith noted suspiciously, walking into the darkened living room well after midnight and sitting on the couch, where Alex sprawled with Jacob perched on his chest, both covered in chocolate Graham cracker crumbs.

"He was hungry," Alex shrugged, motioning with his chin, as Jacob burrowed sleepily into him, a crumbling cookie still squished in his hand, as another muted infomercial flickered in the background.

"You miss her," Meredith teased, surveying the rest of the damage to the room and checking briefly to ensure that her son was fine.

"She'll only be gone a week," Alex snorted, handing her the television remote. She'd conned him into watering Phil and his freaking friends, anyway, and he'd been over to her place that afternoon, and it wasn't like she'd just packed up and taken off completely, and she'd actually told him when she'd be back, not that that mattered or anything.

"Who?" Cristina asked, walking into the room with a drink in tow, and drawing her legs up underneath her as she curled into a chair.

"His girl friend," Meredith said tiredly. "She went to visit her family in Ohio."

"The Cleavers?" Cristina chortled, smirking at Alex. "Do they even know she's dating an Evil Spawn?"

"Not dating," Alex grumbled, shaking his head.

"She's not his type," Meredith repeated, rolling her eyes.

"No kidding," Cristina snorted.

"Shouldn't you be torturing Burke?" Alex growled at her.

"They're not speaking," Meredith corrected, taking some Graham crackers from the package and settling back onto the couch.

"We are too," Cristina huffed. They were, about schedules and surgeries; it was all very civil, all very professional; it was how things should have been from the beginning.

"I don't blame him," Alex muttered.

"Why are we watching this again?" Cristina demanded, glaring at the television.

"He misses April, you're not talking to Burke, and I miss Derek," Meredith answered, as another studied silence fell across the room. It had to, because there was nothing else to say, about how Jacob looked more like him every day, and she still hadn't cleaned out his closet, and the blur of an anniversary was bringing an awkward stone memorial and more stilted conversations, and the framed post it still hung above her bed.

"Burke's an ass," Cristina observed, moments later, and Meredith knew it was all she could say, because Derek had died on her table, and part of Cristina had died with him, and they didn't do condolences, and they didn't do feelings, and it was just understood among them that the anti-depressants would continue for as long as necessary, and the still monthly meetings with Wyatt were helping, mostly, and nobody touched Derek's things without asking first, and they waited for her to mention his name.

"April makes lists for everything," Alex volunteered, scowling, and Meredith almost burst out laughing, because he really didn't know the half of it, and April really wasn't his type, and she was in completely over her head, and by the time her notes and lists pointed that out to her, she'd be very happily plopped beside him on their own couch, while their own chubby, crumb covered child purred happily on his chest, even though they never dated, and she never had a boyfriend, and he didn't do freaking babies.

"How do I tell him?" she asked softly, delicately stroking Jacob's hand, which curled tightly around Alex's flannel sleeve. It was a crazy thing to worry about right then, with the merger, and their Fellowships, and the day care center all gnawing on her. But it was all that occurred to her when night fell, and she slid her fingers across the empty space beside her on the bed, and she realized that the sound of his voice was fading away from her memory, like a tide pulling away from the shore, and Wyatt was right.

Memories left with the nightmares, she realized, and that seemed a poor bargain, because Jacob would need to know about his father, and she'd need to tell him before she forgot anything important, and what had never seemed like enough to begin with seemed like even less and less, now, as his scent faded from his clothes, and his name dropped from hospital publications, and she was going from Meredith Grey, poor widow, which she'd hated instantly, to Meredith Grey, anonymous single mother slash struggling Resident.

"My mother never talked about my dad, after he died," Cristina said bitterly. "She just moved on, remarried, new wife, new life," she scowled, shaking her head.

"I can't do that," Meredith said flatly, brushing her finger over Jacob's plump hand again. "Derek would have loved him; he would have been so excited," she said sadly. "He'd have done all the silly dad things that my father never did," she added wistfully.

"You know it's going to be a while before this even comes up, right?" Cristina asked awkwardly.

"I'm forgetting things already," she said glumly. "I don't want him to think that Derek just walked away from him. I don't want him to ever think that…he wasn't wanted," she whispered urgently, "or that Derek wouldn't have been thrilled to have him."

"April made a notebook about Reed," Alex said finally. "You know, like with pictures in it."

"A scrapbook," Meredith noted skeptically, frowning. "You're not serious."

"I'm not anything," he shifted uncomfortably. "You're the one who's so worried about-"

"My son," she said, nodding abruptly. "That's my job," she reminded him. "So what if I don't want him to grow up and be like…" she muttered.

"Like us?" he smirked, glaring back at her.

"Yeah," she said, sinking pensively back into the couch as another infomercial started.

"You're so whipped," Cristina snorted, smirking at Alex as she wandered back into the kitchen.

"Burke still talks to me," he muttered after her.


	7. Chapter 7

_Standard disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual._

* * *

April woke later then usual, startling at the shimmering grey haze filtering in through the window, before remembering that she wasn't working until late that evening. Closing her eyes again, she listened to his soft, rhythmic breathing, felt the pulse of his skin against hers with each breath, and the steady beat of his heart against her own chest.

It was silly, but she was sure she could pick it out from any other now, if she'd seen it on a heart monitor, just like she knew every angle and curve, and all of his favorite spots, and just how long her hands could linger beneath his ribs, and how lightly they had to rest, to avoid breaking their tickling truce. That was fair anyway, she agreed, her eyes cracking open as she traced her fingers along his torso, since the pact only applied when he was more then half asleep, and there were special rules for the shower.

She didn't need to review them anymore, though, though she was still up dating her lists and diagrams, not entirely anatomically correct, because that might embarrass him, but accurate enough to guide her, as she stroked delicately across his silky skin, her fingers curling around him as he stirred with a sleepy moan, his body lazily unfolding. They'd always teased her about that, in anatomy labs, about keeping the bodies covered up, and getting all red faced and flustered when they weren't, and cringing when she had to touch them in places she was sure they wouldn't have wanted her to, even if they were dead.

It just seemed all rude and intrusive, especially with the bright lights, and it was hard to imagine the scalpels not hurting, even though they were cadavers.

This was something else entirely, though, because his flesh was all warm and quivery, and she was sure he liked very light strokes along the loose creases lining favorite spot number three, since that was on her list, and always led to deep sighs, and she was sure he didn't mind her studying him, even when he slept, because he'd never cared where the blankets were, or how bright the room was, and she was sure he didn't mind her touching him, as long as she obeyed the tickle truce, because he had a lot of spots he liked, even besides his favorites, and he didn't even seem to mind if she ran her fingers over his scars, and mostly all she ever noticed was deep, contented murmurs and sleepy sort of smiles, even when he was sort of almost awake as her curious hands wandered.

She wondered if maybe that meant Reed was wrong about some things, too, because she always said guys liked to be out and gone before you even woke up, and that it was better that way. And that made sense to her when they'd started, because then it might still be dark in the room and she wouldn't have to scramble to get dressed just to dash to the shower and she wouldn't have to stay awake all night trying to hide behind the pillows while praying he didn't wake first and cursing her mother's butt and Aunt Edna's hips.

It had made even more sense the first morning she woke wrapped in his arms, bewildered and terrified and struggling not to breathe, since then he'd feel the jiggling, feel that there was too much below and too little up top, and he'd see everything because it was never, never sunny in Seattle but it had to be that freaking morning because that was just her dumb luck and then he'd notice that it was her his fingers were gripping and not the over stuffed satin pillows she'd bought at the state fair the year before she started med school.

It made less sense, now, because he still didn't seem to mind her jiggling any more then he minded his scars, and he still sighed when his arms closed around her, just like he did when she was in the right spots, and his hands still sank into her hips as if they liked to be there, and he definitely knew all of her favorite places, and she stopped noticing a while ago if the lights were on or if he woke up first, and it wasn't like Phil was a gossip.

Reed must just have not liked this part, she thought, shrugging idly, as her fingers closed more firmly around him, in a way that always made him groan. She watched his eyes flutter open, a familiar half smile stirring lazily across his face as she slid across his chest, her body pressed more closely into his, as his hands dragged down her back, until another soft whimper escaped her, and she wondered again how anyone could enjoy this in the on call rooms, since she'd never trust those locks, and Alex seeing her was one thing, but anyone else was something else entirely.

It could make you almost late for work, though, that part, since she considered not being a half hour early to be technically late, and she wondered if maybe that was Reed's point, though Reed considered anything under three minutes late to be technically on time, and she still wondered as she strode past an on call room that morning if everyone could tell anyway, since every inch of her still tingled, and her limbs were still too warm and too rubbery, and her breathing still fluttered in her chest, and she was still in a heated haze.

That could have been it too, she imagined, with a sudden smirk, as she tried to drag her attention back to the heart monitor she was supposed to be watching; maybe Reed just didn't want to get distracted, or get all wrapped up in someone - and then become someone else entirely, just to keep them happy. They'd seen that happen plenty of times in med school, seen it happen so often that sometimes it just seemed inevitable.

Reed wouldn't let that happen, though, she reminded herself; then again, Reed always woke up pretty much alone, even if the guy she was with left after she did. Reed liked the on call room thing, too, though; then again, Yoga worked for her, and she didn't have bad genes, and she didn't care who saw her no matter what she was wearing, and Reed teased her about being embarrassed in the anatomy labs, too, and Reed probably would've been able to do number seventeen perfectly the first time that morning – and still gotten all the conditioner out of hair in time to not be late for work. Then again, Reed had shorter hair.

She wished that she could still talk Reed about all this, even if Reed would make fun of her; she wished she could talk to her sisters, too, but that's probably why she had all her journals in the first place, she reminded herself, since her sisters would tease her, too; she almost even envied Meredith later that day, when she spotted her in the lunch room, since at least Meredith had Cristina Yang, even if Christina Yang still sort of scared her.

She could talk to Meredith, she imagined, but not just then, not with Cristina there. She could visit with Jacob, though, since Meredith often brought him up from the day care center to have lunch with them, and it was hard to juggle lunch trays and babies all by yourself, and Jacob was pretty easy to please as long as pudding was involved.

"Thanks, April," Meredith breathed moments later, setting her tray haphazardly on the cafeteria table as she watched Jacob seated happily on the young woman's lap, eagerly shoving a soggy Graham cracker into his mouth. He was still too young for table food, really, but he was so enthusiastic about them, Meredith could never refuse.

"Oh, he's a sweet heart," April crooned, watching as the boy giggled gleefully, his chubby hands clutching at the crumbling wafer.

"Yeah, we don't know where that came from," Cristina agreed abruptly, ignoring Meredith's glare as she continued eating her sandwich.

"He reminds me of Alex," April added, tickling the baby's stomach as he giggled louder and leaned closer into her, and completely missing Cristina's shocked gagging, and Meredith's eyes flying open, as she shot a bewildered double take in Cristina's direction.

"You mean, because he's a sloppy eater?" Cristina prodded sarcastically.

"Cristina," Meredith hissed, kicking her under the table before April could look up again.

"What?' April asked absently, reaching for her pager as she shifted Jacob easily to one side. "Oh, I have to run. I'm on Bailey's service," she added, as if that said everything, which it did, to all of her former interns.

"Thanks again," Meredith said, taking Jacob from her as April smiled happily and went off in a flash.

"Has she ever met Evil Spawn?" Cristina asked incredulously. "He must have something on her. Or maybe she's drugged."

"Who?" Alex asked, plopping his tray down beside theirs and scooting into a seat.

"Your girl friend," Cristina taunted. "She said you're a slob," she added smugly.

"She did not," Meredith corrected immediately, glaring at her again. "And she loves Jacob," she added proudly, cooing over her son as Cristina and Alex both rolled their eyes, while Cristina almost shoved a finger down her throat for dramatic effect.

"Tell him to find his own chick," Alex grumbled, digging into his salad.

"Alex," Meredith protested, "he's barely ten months old."

"He was hitting on that Wong babe this morning," Alex retorted, eying her seriously as he slurped his soda. "Kid's a player," he added proudly.

"Dr. Wong's daughter?" Meredith asked, wide eyed. "She's a toddler."

"Kid's into cougars," Cristina said, shrugging and peeling her banana.

"Or he spends too much time with his dirty uncle Sal," Meredith retorted, clutching Jacob closer as she looked over at Alex sternly.

"So does April, apparently," Cristina chortled. "Seriously, Evil Spawn, what did you do to that poor girl. She's so….sweet," Cristina spat out with a bitter grimace, "and you're so…you," she frowned, waving her hand over his general direction as he slurped noisily.

"Guys," Meredith interrupted, juggling Jacob on her lap. "Seriously, what about our Fellowship applications?"

"What about them?" Cristina asked sourly, frowning as she settled back in her chair. I'm the next Cardio Chief Resident," she said smugly, raising her arms behind her head, "he's Dr. Seuss," she snickered, "and you're Neuro. What about it?" she asked, scowling.

"I applied for a part time slot, remember?" Meredith retorted glumly. "What if they won't let me? What if-" she stammered.

"Webber won't let that happen," Cristina insisted, shaking her head. "Neither would Burke. We're fine," she insisted. "You're just paranoid."

"I'm not paranoid," Meredith snapped, digging another Graham cracker from her diaper bag. "My mother always said that your Fellowship year was the make or break one, that it separated the average surgeons from the great ones," she repeated, almost from rote.

"Yeah," Cristina said, drawing out her response sarcastically. That was pretty much common knowledge. If you survived your first year; you'd probably make it as a surgeon. But surgery was for perfectionists, and just making it was almost as bad as failure.

"I'll be too tired to remember it," Meredith muttered under her breath. Residency was hard enough with a baby, even working part time. Moving on to the Fellowship year was another thing entirely, when the rules restricting work hours no longer really applied, informally, anyway, and competition for the name making surgeries was even more keen.

"He'll be over a year old by then," Alex pointed out, peeling open his pudding, and watching warily as Jacob's eyes lit up in his direction.

"I'm not putting him in day care full time," she snapped, shifting abruptly as he reached over toward Alex and the pudding pack he'd just opened. She'd told them all that before, and they'd all met her mother, which should have told them everything, and he was not going to be all dark twisty, not over her dead body, or his father's, she thought glumly.

"He doesn't seem to mind it," Alex shrugged, holding out the spoon to him as the baby eagerly leaned forward.

He didn't, Meredith knew. He was bubbly and friendly and calm, as long as he was fed, and he loved the staff and he'd go to anybody and he laughed easily and he was so happy it terrified her, because he'd have to learn some day, about his father, and then he'd just have her, well, her, and cranky Aunt Cristina, who thought he was a sloppy eater, and dirty Uncle Sal, who was apparently teaching him to flirt with older women.

"I don't want-" she protested, interrupted suddenly by her own pager. "Damn it," she grumbled, standing abruptly.

"I thought you said we had to watch our language around him?" Cristina teased, raising her eyebrows in Meredith's direction.

"Shut up," Meredith snapped, shoving her frazzled pony tail back into place as she gathered her tray.

"Can you take him back?" she asked, cringing as she watched him smearing Alex's pudding all over his face.

"Um-huh," Alex nodded casually, apparently making matters worse with the pudding as Meredith plopped the diaper bag down beside them, grabbing her tray as she rushed off to a post-op consult.

"Two slobs," she grumbled, sliding her tray into the return slot as she hurried out the door.

* * *

"So, how were you feeling," Wyatt asked him the following month, still writing in his file as she adjusted her glasses, "after all the memorial talk: Any unease? Nightmares?"

"No," he said flatly, glancing pointedly at his watch. The questions were all idiotic, and the memorial crap had been months ago, or weeks, he'd ignored it anyway, and April had gone to Ohio that week, so it wasn't like she was going on about Reed constantly, and he barely noticed the ugly stone slab in the court yard, and Wyatt was keeping him here only because she could, and he'd have bailed months ago if she wasn't still threatening to pull his Psych clearance, and it wasn't like he was a freaking post-it widow, just a guy who got shot in a supply closet, and it wasn't like he was still watching infomercials at three am every night, and his scars spoke for themselves: He was still here, end of story.

"Dr. Robbins reports that you're still short tempered," she noted, reading through his performance reviews as she eyed him closely. He'd heard all that since he was a kid, though, since he'd defended his mom, and beat the crap out of his dad, and tried to watch out for Aaron and Amber, until people like Wyatt took him away, again and again.

"That's my job," he insisted, and it was, even Robbins said so, that his job was to advocate for his patients, and if freaking Mary Poppins wouldn't stand up for them when their parents weren't doing their jobs, that was all the more reason for him to do his.

"You're job is to be a bully?" Wyatt demanded sternly, and he bristled at the term, because he'd met enough bullies head on to know that sometimes they weren't just stinking drunks, that sometimes they sat in fancy offices lined with fish tanks and Psych manuals, and manila folders that they thought had you pegged.

He said nothing, just seethed silently. He wouldn't take the bait this time, because he remembered the games they played, how they looked for any excuse to add another line to his file, another note or a question mark. But it was close, and he almost asked her why she was still looking at him as if he'd been the one who started the shooting, as if he hadn't always walked into these things long after the violence first erupted.

"Last time you were here," she observed, reading over her notes as the silence persisted between them, "we ended our session by discussing your divorce. You said you'd moved on," she noted casually. "Is that true?"

She was another of those people who used 'that' like it meant something, and he scowled because there was no possible answer except yes, because Izzie was gone and life went on and there was no point bitching about it because he'd seen it coming and it wasn't like it was worse then a bullet blast to the chest, just different, and it all heals over if you just ignore it and don't pick at the scabs, just like they tell all the patients in Plastics, after surgery or burns, and this whole conversation was like the stupid stone memorial, just scab picking, and if she was an actual doctor and not a professional gossip or busy body she'd know that as well as he did.

"You're seeing someone, then?" she prodded, and it was another of those non-question questions, since Yang was 'seeing' Burke even though they weren't speaking, though she called him her stupid boy friend, and April talked to him all time, hell April talked to her freaking houseplants and the birds on the windowsill, but she'd never said they were a thing or anything, and chicks always pressed you to say it was a thing – another non word – when they weren't sure what they wanted but wanted more of it anyway, as if you were supposed to have a freaking clue what they were after when even they didn't.

"Alex?" Wyatt prodded, and he just shifted awkwardly because what was he supposed to say, since he couldn't tell her about the magazines, and it wasn't like April called them dates when they went to games or restaurants or zoos or those weird alternative music places she always dragged him to, and it wasn't like going to Joe's or watching movies at her place or cooking stupid spaghetti – which wasn't even cooking, really, just heating, since even Mere could do that, meant anything, since otherwise she'd be demanding to know what every freaking movie and every freaking meal meant – as if chicken wasn't just cheap protein, or as if there was some deep symbolism to Attack of the Snake Heads 4, and he was sure he'd have heard about it by now if they were dates because then they could never be just a quick meal or a way to zone out after watching a seven year old die.

"You're seeing someone?" she prodded, and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat again, because he'd been waiting for signs, since he always saw them coming. But April didn't talk to her plants that much, and they never answered, and the bird feeding could be just because she grew up on a farm and was used to taking care of animals – he could see that, and he could forgive the Ohio state thing because she couldn't help where she was born, and the journal thing was weird but not 'hide the knives' weird and sometimes he wished she'd just shut up about her dead friend – whose eyes still stared at him sometimes before he woke up – but then again, some of the best magazines had been Reed's.

"Maybe," he shrugged, which was the wrong answer, judging from her expression, and reminded him again why he never talked about this stuff, because really, what else could he say, that April wasn't crazy like Ava, or… or like whatever the hell Izzie had turned out to be, and she wasn't demanding like Addison with her baseball and barbecues plan, - or that April actually understood baseball as a sport you played you to win, not just as some white picket fantasy that never happened for real – or that she knew her football, too, even if she was an Ohio State fan, as if any of that said anything about what Wyatt was asking, with her pen poised over her notebook and her glasses sliding down her nose.

"So it's… casual?" Wyatt asked, puzzled, and 'it' was a problem, too, because casual was ten minutes in an on call room to chicks, usually, not months and months of whatever they were doing, and casual certainly didn't involve anything beyond number nineteen, not even for chicks who normally did casual, never mind for April, who'd never even done, well, any of them before, as far as he could tell, and wasn't the type to do casual at all, never mind with a guy like him, though she'd never demanded that he call her his girl friend, or name whatever they were doing, whatever the hell that meant, or even insisted that they be exclusive, though that had pretty much been understood from the first night she cowered under that hideous floral bed spread – which reminded him of Mere's house after the funeral – for reasons he wasn't entirely clear on, all around.

"So… it's serious?" Wyatt asked, more befuddled, as if she couldn't quite imagine that a guy like him could be serious with anyone, or maybe just not with a girl like April, not that she knew who he meant, though she might, because she was freaking nosy as hell, and worked at the hospital, where everyone knew everything, and the grape vine wasn't just lush and over-grown, but damn near infallible, and sometimes even psychic.

"Not really," he muttered, for lack of a better term, since it wasn't really frantic or non stop raving lunacy with her, like it always had been before. It was just sort of fun when they watched sports together, and annoying when she tickled him, though they had come to an agreement about that, and she always kept her promises – she had to, he imagined, or she'd self-destruct - and unsettling when she wanted to try new food, and something else entirely when she wanted to try a new magazine.

There was no word for it, because it was just sort of weird when she smiled at him and comfortable when she curled up in his arms on the couch and quiet when she worked on her - what ever she did in those notebooks while he reviewed for his surgeries and – and embarrassing when she bragged about him and loud, especially during the June and October editions, and peaceful afterwards when she drifted off beside him, or ended up sleeping curled around him, at least, after she'd finally stopped scrounging for that ugly bed spread and self-diagnosing congenital hip defects – as if they weren't all warned about that the first day of medical school – and obsessing over whether her neighbors or the house plants had heard them, as if a freaking philodendron could be scarred for life – or even heard her shrieking, even though, to be fair, number eight was pretty advanced.

"So you're not looking for anything serious," Wyatt commented, nodding and writing another few lines in his file, and his silence was another wrong answer, because chicks were always about serious, and if you weren't about serious that meant you were fucked up, somehow, as if casual couldn't just be casual, and sex couldn't just be sex, and dinner couldn't just be dinner, as if everything had to mean something, as if every spent condom and every slightly over cooked ravioli had it's own freaking story to tell.

He just shrugged and frowned again, because there was still no right answer, and she still held his clearance over his head, and he wondered suddenly if April wasn't thinking the same things about him that Wyatt was, even though she hadn't said anything, because April had a normal family, neurotic, but normal, and she probably thought about baseball and barbecues, too – even if she could teach a kid to throw herself, he'd seen her, at the batting cage - and he wondered if she was watching out for signs, too, or if she'd already found some, and just hadn't said anything yet.

"Maybe we can talk about that next time," Wyatt announced, glancing at the clock on her watch as she scribbled out his next appointment card, and he'd stopped arguing months ago, when she continued stuffing the annoying little cardboard squares into his hand, because it was all about surgeries, ultimately, and chicks came and went, but work, work you could trust, work you could count on, work would always be there waiting for you.

* * *

Cristina sat stone still, staring absently across the quadrangle, as the final glint of dusk cast shadows over the small polished memorial, which stood adjacent to the hospital's entrance. Even months later, she hated the sleek black marble, the daily reminder of their failure, of her failure, and she wondered what message it could possibly send to anybody, that a hospital marked deaths, when it should be all about saving lives.

It was one on a long list of things she hated about the place, and she ran through that list methodically, again and again, as night settled around her, and the paper she clutched furiously in her shaking hands crinkled, and a chilly breeze swept over her, as employee shifts changed, and she couldn't move, because she couldn't stay here, and she couldn't go home, and she was going nowhere no matter how she looked at it.

He sat quietly beside her, so quietly she hadn't noticed when he arrived, and she didn't care any longer, to wipe the tears away, anyway, and he knew better then to offer her his jacket, because that would be obscene, even if it was what gentlemen did, and that's what he'd always consider himself, no matter what he actually did.

"It was a tough decision," he intoned finally, his rich baritone rustling the leaves of the tress surrounding them, which cast eerie shadows along the walkways. "Jenkins was a fine choice," he observed, as if the committee had been selecting the Chief Resident for some other hospital, and not delivering the ultimate referendum on her life up that point, as if she'd ever come in anything but first, as if being their second choice, or their third, or the last, could be of any consequence to her.

They enraged her, the rustling leaves, and the unknown committee members, and the tears that would not stop, and her hands which still trembled whenever she glanced at the polished stone memorial, the ultimate testament to her skill, to her talent, to her.

"They're wrong," she insisted fiercely, through gritted teeth, in a tone that betrayed her, and her voice shook like her hands, wafting in the light wind, and the tears still came, because she'd received the paper hours before, and she still couldn't convince herself that a mistake been made – at least, a mistake that wasn't hers.

"Perhaps," he agreed, his face unreadable against the collar of his coat, his hands steady and firm in front of him, his tone and his words rock solid, and they enraged her more, his words, because they rumbled right through her, and they couldn't be true, not at all, because even a perhaps was a recognition of her failure, and told her everything about what he saw when he looked at her, and what he saw could never be her, then, because Cristina Yang was not a perhaps, and Cristina Yang came in second to nobody.

"You were supposed to help me," she hissed finally, her body shaking as she stared at the ground beneath her feet.

"I did," he noted calmly. "You competed on your own. Isn't that what you wanted?" he asked seriously, eying her closely.

And it was, because she didn't need Preston Burke to be Cristina Yang, and she would be the best cardio thoracic surgeon in the country without his help, if only her hands would stop trembling, and his voice would stop echoing through her, and her body would stop quivering at the slightest touch of his hands, if only she could be her again, could be who she was, before she'd ever met him, before she'd agreed to marry him the first time, before she'd become the type of woman who would promise her forever to anyone.

"You left me," she snapped, her face twisting into a violent grimace. "You took… you took everything," she spat, furious as much at herself as she was at him. "And then you left," she muttered, her fingers mocking a scurrying motion.

"You didn't need me," he observed icily, his voice steeled. "Isn't that what you told me again, not too long ago?" he demanded, and it was more an accusation then a question, and it enraged her all over again, because he was making this about her, again, and not about him, him and his need to control everything, to decide everything, to pick for her.

"Then why are you here?" she demanded bitterly, brushing more tears away from her eyes, and reminding herself frantically that it was just dinner, and just sex, and that it had been on her terms this time, because she had picked up the phone, and she hadn't dressed for him, and she hadn't stayed that last night, and she hadn't needed his help.

"Because I love you," he observed, as if announcing the day's weather, and she just barely squashed her impulse to scream, because she'd done this before, and she'd been led, she'd let herself be led down that aisle, to a future that never was, and it was all just words and fabric and lace, spinning an early grave around her.

"That's why you left?" she spat, and it was a question and an exclamation and a plea and an accusation and a rebuttal and an answer all in one, and it just hung between them like a sheet of ice, grown thick and frigid and dense in the evening fog.

"You didn't need me," he repeated evenly, "but I wanted you," and it wasn't an apology or an expression of regret or an invitation and it stung when it reached her ears.

"This is me," she muttered fiercely, her hands trembling in front of her, and it was there all over again, because she was her hands, and her hands weren't what they were when they'd met, and he hadn't come back for her at all, and even if he had, she wasn't there any longer, and her name might as well be on that memorial, too.

"Not to me," he said quietly, though his voice thundered around her and she had no idea who she could possibly be, if she wasn't her hands, and she was sure she didn't want to be whoever that was, anyway, because all she wanted, all she'd wanted desperately for over a year now, was to be Cristina Yang again, the same Cristina Yang he hadn't wanted in the first place, not really, not when push came to shove, as it always did with them.

"This is me," she repeated, and it was dizzying and sickening to see it right in front of her and she was sure they'd seen it too, the Board, sure he'd seen it, and it was every failure she could possibly imagine all rolled into one crinkled piece of paper, clutched in hands that couldn't possibly be a surgeon's.

"Not to me," he repeated, standing abruptly and tugging at the collar of his coat, standing firm against the wind, and it galled her all over again, because all that was left after they took away her hands was the same quivering woman who'd poured into that wedding dress and stared down that aisle and who would have agreed to become barely half of Preston Burke, the faint shadow that trailed in his wake.

"That's not who I came back for," he said sternly, adjusting his coat precisely and striding away, and she watched as his shadow loomed gracefully against the sidewalk, watched until he disappeared into the darkness, watched for a long while afterward, and she wondered if that was just who they were, just who they had to be, just who she had to be, if she was going to be anything at all.

* * *

"Wednesday should be good," April noted a month later, leaving the almost half filled watering can on the window sill. "You should talk to them, too," she reminded him again, turning away with a giggle as she watched a darkening scowl flash across his face.

"I'll water your freaking weeds," he growled, rolling his eyes. "That's it."

"You lost fair and square," she insisted, eying him sternly. "You have to talk to them, too, even Phil, that was the deal."

"Freaking pool shark," he growled, walking over to the windowsill. "Why is his name Phil anyway?" he scowled.

"He's a Philodendron," she replied sarcastically, motioning to the large bushy plant in a green pot, as if that was perfectly obvious. "Didn't you take botany?"

"Weeds are weeds," he grumbled. "And Iowa's got a great bio department."

"They're not weeds," she huffed, fluffing up the plant's leaves before dropping onto the couch, as she sorted through her travel bag. "And I'll be gone a week, they can't go that long without watering," she added, emphasizing her point.

"I kept them alive last time," he reminded her, rolling his eyes as he sat back down beside her. "Think I can manage."

"My dad's picking me up at the air port again," she said, ignoring his commentary, as she checked her list. She liked to be prepared for everything, and she always bought chewing gum and hand cream ahead of time, and a tiny tooth brush, in case the plane was delayed, and hand wipes and tissues, because you never know when you might them, and lip balm, because the air on planes was always dry, and extra pens, so she wouldn't miss writing anything down in her journal, and you never knew who you might on an airplane.

"Carrie and Dani are coming home, too," she added, half excitedly, She loved her sisters, but they were all so different that sometimes she wondered how they could all be related.

Especially Beth, who dyed her hair jet black, and had three earring holes in one ear, and reminded her almost of Reed, sometimes, because she was so opinionated. Beth was still more like her then Carrie, though, who run every extra curricular activity, and was the president of her class, and the social hub of the school, or Dani, who'd moved all the way to Pittsburgh at nineteen for her dance classes, since she looked more like Beth, and didn't have their mother's genetics, or their aunt Edna's.

Alex nodded blankly, staring at the television. She had pictures of them around her place, her sisters, and he'd heard enough about them to know that they all did normal girl crap, and that they'd always lived together as kids, and that it probably wasn't drugs and booze and screaming and blood in their farm house, or at least, not like it'd been at his.

"I couldn't invite you," she said finally, a few minutes later. "You get that, right?" He'd never have wanted to go anyway, she was sure, and she hadn't actually mentioned she had a boy friend last time, since she didn't really, and her sisters would just say she was lying or tease her, since he'd never go to Ohio. But it was polite to say something any way, she imagined, and he was watering her plants while she was gone.

"That's cool," Alex smirked, shrugging. "Better for me." She wasn't his type, Alex reminded himself wildly, as his ears reddened. He wasn't into chicks like her, chicks who followed all the rules, and talked to stupid weeds, and made dumb ass lists for everything, and visited sisters they were annoyed at half the time. That's what he should have told Wyatt to begin with, that it was nothing, really, since she wasn't even his type.

"Yeah," she sighed, "me too." She'd even Google-ed it, once, boyfriend, because Reed was gone, and she wasn't even sure Reed had ever gotten this far. But the first thing to pop up were ads for boyfriend jeans, which would never fit her, and which just reminded her that maybe girls like her didn't get this far with them for a reason, and it was just as well since he didn't want to be one, anyway.

"They don't exactly know about you, my parents," she added quickly, wondering almost immediately if that hadn't sounded rude, or like she was embarrassed by him, and not by, by the magazines that she'd just die if they heard about. "They wouldn't expect – this – from me," she said quietly, almost cringing as she pointed vaguely between them. "Maybe from Beth," she added wryly. "Or Dani. She's pretty, and she… she's a dancer. I was supposed to be… supposed to be… the smart daughter, I guess," she shrugged.

She wasn't sure, exactly, because she faded into the background, usually, behind bubbly, out going, Carrie, who had friends everywhere, and high strung, intense Dani, who never sat still for a second, and daring, always spoke her mind Beth, who wore leather jackets, and got caught smoking, once, and dated a senior when she was just a freshman, though her parents never found out about that. They never found out about a lot of things, with her sisters, but with her, there was never even anything to know, good or bad, even, not when Dani was bowing on stage, and Carrie was working on her next election speech. She wished she could be more like Beth sometimes, and not care at all what her parents thought, or even if they noticed her.

"Look," he interrupted. "If you're so ashamed of -" And she probably was, he imagined, because he hadn't been very careful, not over the past few months, and she already knew more then she should, not about juvie or Amber or anything, but more then she should, and she was smarter then she gave herself credit for, inexperienced or not, and it didn't take a genius to see where this was heading anyway.

"I'm not," she insisted, cutting him off, wide eyed again. "But my parents, they wouldn't expect me to have a boyfriend," she blurted, before she could stop the words tumbling out. She watched his face cloud over, regretting it immediately. "I've never had one before," she added sheepishly. "I guess… I still don't know how, and it's not like you want to be one, anyway," she added miserably.

"Huh?" Alex asked, staring at her. "You never even said that's what you wanted. And it's not like I'm good at this, either" he grumbled. He wasn't, really. They'd always told him that, and he'd only ever cared once, sort of, and he'd only ever tried, once, and she'd even offered him lessons, before she died in his arms but didn't, and stuffed a note in his locker that didn't even say what he'd done wrong, as if he had a freaking clue.

"Meredith says you sort of are," April protested. "She told me you're a good guy, once you get past all the scary parts," she added, still reluctant to look at him. He was sort of scary when he was mad, and he never wanted to talk about it, well, usually, but mostly it blew over in a big huff, like a funnel cloud in august, after he went for a run, or lifted weights, or ranted at the television, or devoured a whole sleeve of Oreos, double stuff, usually, because there were always coupons for those in the Sunday paper, and she'd just gotten into the habit of keeping them in the rooster cookie jar that used to be her aunt Sadie's, who kept it filled like that, too, because uncle Karl was sort of like him.

"Meredith talks too much." he insisted, shaking his head. "Did she tell you I beat the crap out of my dad before he left? And that my sister probably hates me?" he demanded, his mind rioting, because Mere knew him better then anybody, and who knew what else she might say if she was drunk or tried or distracted, or meddling just because she was horny and Yang was annoying and every minor fever Jacob sprung was bubonic plague.

"No," she said quietly. She'd known, sort of, that his dad hit his mom, just from other things he'd said, when he was fuming about the parents in Peads, and she'd heard a little about his brother, who he talked with every week or two, and Meredith had said that he'd tell her the rest himself, when he was ready, which he had, in bits and pieces; but she hadn't heard about the angry sister, not that she didn't get that, since sisters were sisters.

"How come you never said anything?" she asked softly, after an awkward silence, and it was a silly question, because he never talked much, not about his family, especially, but he sounded almost guilty, like how she'd felt the first time that she showed him number seventeen, and that hadn't made much sense either, looking back, since all the diagrams really helped, and it had turned out to be one of their favorites.

"I told you," he said impatiently, "I'm not-" And it was another search for the right word, because he was always not something, so much so that it was pointless to specify.

"You protected your family," she interrupted. "Or, you tried to. I get that," she added quietly. "Your sister probably does, too." She was fairly sure of that, actually, because Dani or Beth would have gone postal if anything like that had happened in their house, and no one would have even found the body, and people in Ohio just understood that sometimes these things had to be handled… directly.

"I put him in the hospital," Alex noted, eying her closely. "Bad."

"If he hit your mom, he deserved it," April shrugged. He never added details to anything, but her sisters had had friends like that in their high school, and some things didn't need details anyway, when you got right down to it. "My dad would kill you if you ever hit me," she noted, "Just so you know."

"He should," Alex agreed, nodding seriously.

"And I doubt your sister actually hates you," she added. "I would've traded mine away in a second when I was a kid. Some times," she added. "But not really." She wouldn't have, because sisters were sisters, even when you couldn't stand them, and sometimes they were all you had after the smoke cleared.

"And I used to wish I had a brother," she admitted sheepishly. "I used to wonder if I'd been around more boys growing up, if maybe then I wouldn't have been a – a – for so long. That's stupid, I know," she admitted, staring back down at her hands.

"No," he said, shaking his head hesitantly.

"You're a terrible liar," she said, rolling her eyes.

"Okay, yeah, it is," he agreed, watching curiously as a brief smile flashed across her face, before another silence settled between them.

"I used to talk about this with Reed," she said finally, glancing back up at him again. "Well, not all of it," she added, almost wincing, since she hated to lie, and she couldn't remember if she'd ever told Reed about the brother thing, and not that it mattered at all but she was German, and from Ohio, and she liked to be accurate.

He said nothing, because words didn't change facts, and Reed still stared back at him some nights, and the freaking stone slab that had her name carved on it first in line, just because her last name started with an 'A,' still loomed in the hospital courtyard, and every supply closet just reminded him that he needed to work harder to forget.

"I miss her," she whispered sadly. "That's why I'm going home again, you know, with the memorial and all, I just wanted to see them all. That's silly, too, I know," she added quietly, rolling her eyes again, "since I was just there a little while ago." She had been, but it had never occurred to her, all those times before, that that might be the last time she saw them, and it had bothered her less lately, that Dani was built like a dancer, and Beth could always speak her mind, and Carrie could strike up a party on line at the DMV.

"I'll water Phil again," Alex grumbled. "And his friends," he added reluctantly.

"That's a boy friend-y thing, you know," she teased.

"Weed watering?" he smirked. "Yeah, I guess it is," he agreed, nodding hesitantly.

"Did you ever wish things had been different?" she asked quietly. She didn't specify if she meant shootings or siblings, but she sort of didn't need to.

"Waste of time," he shrugged, sinking back further into the couch. "They weren't."

"Maybe sometimes they can be," she said, her fingers brushing tentatively across his sleeve as she leaned over shyly to kiss him.

"Yang was right about you," he teased, eying her closely.

"What?" she asked, her eyes suddenly widening.

"She said you must be a sex kitten," he shrugged, toying with a lock of her hair.

"She did?" April sputtered. "When? She did? She didn't? She did? Did you tell her anything?" she asked, wincing as she cringed. "Did she hear us?"

"I told her about seventeen," he smirked, wiggling his eyebrows at her as her face reddened, before breaking into a skeptical frown.

"No you didn't," she accused suddenly, pulling back slightly and eying him sternly.

"How do you know that?" he asked suspiciously.

"You just told me," she giggled, watching as he rolled his eyes.

"Meredith told me you were a bad liar, too" she teased.

"Meredith talks too much," he grumbled, sighing suddenly as she kissed him again.


	8. Chapter 8

_Standard disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual._

* * *

"I accepted a date," Meredith announced abruptly the following month, juggling Jacob on her lap as Cristina stared at her wide-eyed, and Alex nearly choked on his peas. It made her a dirty, dirty whore, since it was just months after the memorial, the memorial to her son's dead father, and she was sure her date wasn't married, positive, but she had a sickening sensation that she was on the verge of entering the Dirty Mistress Club again.

It reminded her vaguely of Mark Sloan, who'd taken off after Lexi well over a year ago, but gotten side tracked, she'd heard, by a flight attendant at the air port, and a passenger at thirty thousand feet, and a bar maid during the lay over at LAX, and who'd never gotten east of LA, where he worked at a hospital near Addison's Wellness Center, Addison, whose new husband traveled a lot for work, and didn't know the half of it.

"Did you sleep with him already?" Cristina demanded, sitting back in her chair and folding her arms over her chest. "Who is he? Why didn't you say anything? It's not the vet, is it? Because seriously, Mere-"

"He's not a vet," Meredith snapped. "He works in the Finance department. And you should talk," she retorted, glaring at Cristina as she opened Jacob's lunch containers, while he banged his already sticky hands excitedly on the table. It was already a miracle and a half that she'd gotten a date at all, with her insane schedule, and her voracious son, and the brothel she was running on the side.

"A bean counter?" Alex scowled. "Do we know him?" he asked sternly.

"She's horny," Cristina insisted, shaking her head

"He's the Director of Institutional Investments," Meredith huffed. "And I wouldn't bring just anyone home to… I have responsibilities now," she insisted, motioning to Jacob as she struggled to wipe mashed potatoes and gravy out of her hair.

She'd already been working on it, the scrap book that April had given her, with the soft leather cover and the embossed edges and the blue backgrounds, which reminded her of Derek's eyes, and Jacob's. He'd know that his father was a brain surgeon, that he loved fishing and Ferry boats, and had planned to build them a big house up on a hill, where he'd have brothers or sisters, and a dog, and a tree house looking out over the bay.

He'd know that they'd made promises, too, promises they'd written out eagerly on a post it note because they couldn't wait another minute to be together forever, even if forever turned out to be entirely too short. He'd know that she'd planned to keep those promises, too, if she could have, had planned to keep them forever. She hoped he'd understand, someday, that she couldn't, not when she had a life to rebuild for both of them.

"What about him," Cristina chortled, waving toward Alex as Jacob clamored eagerly into his lap, eying the French Fries and pudding that sat on his tray. "Look at that," she said, scowling as Jacob dug into the ketchup with gusto, stuffing fries into his mouth along with Alex, while smearing his hands across Alex's scrubs. "Do you want him to be that when he grows up?" Cristina asked incredulously, as Alex stuck his tongue out at her.

"Maybe we should be talking about Burke instead," Meredith retorted, glaring at her again. They should talk about Burke instead, since at least he was still alive, and at least they still had a chance at forever, even if none of them ever thought about forever much, not after the memorial, which was all about the past tense again.

"What about Burke?" Alex scowled. "Is he making you Chief Resident after all?" he demanded, eying Cristina closely.

"No," she snapped, tossing her napkin and her apple core on her tray with a thud. "Nothing's going on with Burke."

"I thought he proposed again?" Meredith prompted sarcastically. He probably had, since he was still waiting, as if waiting wasn't the stupidest thing in the world to do, when you never knew if you'd get another day, or another chance, when you never knew how much you'd regret wasted time, until the past tense came again, invading your future dreams.

"Horny," Alex nodded, still chewing as he pulled the lid off his pudding and tried to get Jacob to hold a small plastic spoon.

"And what did I say about using that language around my son?" she demanded, looking at Alex with a curious scowl. It was still all wrong, she imagined sometimes, that Derek's son giggled and gurgled so happily in other people's arms.

That's what Derek would have wanted for him, Wyatt insisted, what Meredith should want for him, too, and it was entirely true, except for the tears that still welled up in her eyes, sometimes, when Cristina showed him the workings of a stethoscope, and Alex bent Jacob's chubby, sticky little fingers around the laces of a football, and Richard scooped him up in the hallways, insisting he looked more like Derek everyday.

"What?" Cristina chortled. "You haven't heard Dirty Uncle Sal and the Sex Kitten going at it? The kid lives in a brothel. He has to learn sometime," Cristina said, digging into her yogurt as she motioned toward Meredith's squirming son.

"My little angel?" Meredith gasped, horrified, as Alex and Cristina glanced at each other and both rolled their eyes.

"Dude," Alex snickered, "he's already moved on from that Wong chick in the day care. He's flirting with nurses now," he added proudly, smirking as Meredith stared wide eyed, as her son giggled and gurgled and savored his pudding.

"You see," Meredith insisted. "This is why I need to get away from doctors. I need a nice, normal-" She needed to think of her son, Wyatt kept reminding her. She needed to think of her future, of their future. She needed to think of a life outside of the hospital, or she'd be her mother, and Jacob would be her, or Alex, and he'd drag his dark and twisty story onto an afternoon talk show, and the audience would just nod sympathetically and wince and agree that she didn't deserve for him to visit her in the nursing home.

"Bean counter," Cristina chortled, scowling. "Seriously, you're a brain surgeon. That's worse then a vet."

"I don't want him to think that that's all there is to life," Meredith retorted, shaking her head vigorously. "I don't want him to grow up alone and miserable in a hospital."

That, she wouldn't allow, that she'd promised long ago, to herself and to Derek and to Jacob; that simply wasn't an option.

"He's already discovered nurses," Alex reminded her, wiggling his eye brows. "He won't be lonely."

"Life is surgery," Cristina added, "Surgery is life. What more is there?"

"Burke not putting out, either?" Alex snorted.

"He would," Cristina said smugly, sipping her soda. "I'm making him wait."

"Huh?" Alex asked, blinking several times.

"He wants her, but won't admit it. She needs him, but she won't admit it," Meredith intoned, rolling her eyes. "They're less mature then Jacob," Meredith added, "who is not hitting on any nurses," she demanded, watching as Alex just shrugged innocently.

"So what's this guy's name?" Alex mumbled, making funny faces at Jacob as the child tried to maneuver pudding into Alex's mouth.

"He didn't go to state school, did he?" Cristina demanded, almost at the same time, as Meredith fingered her food splattered hair, wondering which of the three of them was more likely to scare off any potential date she might bring home.

* * *

Her grandmother always said it was a gift, from her side of the family. It was never polite to refuse a present, but April never really believed her, either. She'd had it for as long as she could remember, the ability to scratch pencil across paper, to bring lush landscapes and finely shaded portraits and detailed pictures to life. Even her teachers noticed, and she was making up the handouts for biology class before she knew it, every fine curve, every minute detail, as amoeba and aortas and anatomical fixtures took shape.

It was a good excuse to look down, too, to avert her eyes, because she was busy, and she was studying, and she was going to medical school, anyway, she was always going to medical school, where everybody studied all the time, just like her, where they didn't care about dresses and dances, and didn't have time to look up from their books. She didn't either, even in high school, because there was always another unit to master.

They didn't look back, either, not at her, even if they crowded around her notebooks ten minutes before the bell rang, or hours before the exam, or days before the Final, when her diagrams actually meant something, at least for a few days, and she could still be mostly invisible, amid the lovingly traced cilia and paramecia and insect larva and leaves, and the intricate workings of blood through the heart and veins and arteries and lungs.

She glanced up absently from her drawing, her gaze wandering from the seascape she was creating, to where Alex was sitting on her couch beside her, busily taking notes as he reviewed for a complex surgery he was scrubbing in on the next afternoon, and tapping his pen whenever he stopped suddenly, to frown more closely at the diagram, before he finally put his books down, and pressed his hands into his eyes, shaking his head.

"You don't have to come, you know," she said quietly. And he didn't, really because her parents were only coming in to Seattle for the weekend, and she hadn't actually told them that much about him yet, and it wasn't like they were coming to see him, since Dani was performing in a local production, and it wasn't like the extra ticket would go to waste.

"It's just one night," he shrugged tiredly, and it was, she insisted, it was just dinner, with her parents and her sister, she reminded herself, as she crawled into bed beside him an hour later, and she was too distracted for magazines and he was too tired to notice and he was already asleep by the time she'd pulled out her journal again, which had a freshly sketched image of Dani on stage, bowing under the spotlights, as the audience roared.

That was always how she pictured her sister, when she wasn't mad at her, and she set that book aside in her secret stash and fished out another one, an earlier one, flipping absently through the pages before turning off the lights and setting it aside. She had pictures of Alex there, too, the first diagrams, and she almost giggled as she traced delicately across his skin, recalling how she'd labeled them with plusses and minuses and stars, depending on where he seemed to prefer her hands, or the rest of her.

Those pictures were well detailed, too, the scale and proportion and perspective, though deliberately blurred in some places, in case someone found them, and they weren't quite labeled completely, she'd noticed later, since it'd taken her longer to notice how his breathing deepened and slowed before tricky surgeries, when her strokes matched the rhythm of his heart beat, and lingered along his spine. She'd never added that back in, though, because she was sure she'd remember, even if Dani was starting to make her wonder about her memory lately, or had, the last time she'd called.

She'd told Dani the truth, she thought, around the time of the memorial, that she hadn't really started looking up from her books at all until she'd met Reed, until she'd moved to Seattle, until she wasn't just in school all time; she'd even mentioned Alex, sort of, since Dani was coming, and might meet him, maybe.

Dani remembered things different, though, she remembered that the boys had looked at her but that she'd never looked up at them, that everyone had looked at her, but she'd never taken her eyes off her books or her drawing long enough to catch them. That made no sense, because Dani was two years ahead of her, which, in high school, might as well have been twenty, and Dani had her own friends and her own lunch table and her whole other life, as if she wasn't even in Ohio, when she was flying across the stage.

She glanced idly at the window, frowning again, and she wondered if she'd always just see things different, or if maybe Dani was right; she wondered what Dani would make of Alex, too, because Alex looked even Dr. Bailey right in the eye when she was yelling at him, and he yelled back at Dr. Robbins when they disagreed, in a way that April could never imagine addressing an Attending, never.

But she wondered maybe if he was looking down at the same time, too, even if not with his eyes, because Dr. Wyatt kept making him see her, and she wondered if that made him grumpy because he didn't need it, or just didn't want it, or because he didn't like being studied – which was maybe why Meredith never actually said things to him out loud – or if maybe he didn't like being told that he wasn't remembering right, either.

She had no idea, really, because she knew better then to ask about their meetings, and the more immediate problem was obviously that her parents were coming that week, and that Dani might meet him, and that once she met him, all her other sisters would know before she could pick up a pencil, and it was the kind of thing that would have kept her up all night, if his breathing wasn't so steady, and the shimmer of his skin against hers so warm.

Waking abruptly very early the next morning, she showered and dressed quickly, hastily scribbling a note to leave on her nightstand, and carefully bundling a sheet around him before she left, because sure he was always a furnace, but she lived on the third floor, where the birds on the tree branches outside her window might peek inside, and her parents might drop in unexpectedly – though they weren't due to fly in for a few days, and they didn't have a key – and it wasn't like them to break into someone's place, but she couldn't just leave him like that, where someone else might see him, like her rude and inconsiderate classmates did with the cadavers in the too brightly lit anatomy lab.

* * *

"You were not waiting up for me," Meredith accused, narrowing her eyes as she dropped onto the couch.

"We wanted to watch football replays," Alex insisted, shaking his head and motioning to Jacob, who slept curled against him on the couch, bundled in his Scooby Doo blanket.

"He was nice," Meredith shrugged hesitantly, rolling her eyes. "We had a nice time. He was…nice," she said. It was nice; he was fun, and polite, and kind, and all those things they babble about in Boy Scout manuals. He would've been perfect…for April.

"Still horny," Alex observed, nodding seriously as Meredith swatted his arm.

"I feel sorry for your girl friend," she grumbled, shaking her head and sinking back into the couch. "And I heard you met the parents," she taunted, giggling mischievously.

"It was just dinner," he insisted. "And she's-"

"Not your type," Meredith laughed. "I know. I'm dating her type," she added, rolling her eyes as she glanced over at her son, who snored softly, the blanket's edge clutched in his hand. "How was he?" she asked, surveying the riot of toy trucks and blocks on the floor, and the crumbs on the coffee table, from the cookies he wasn't supposed to have, and the random plastic farm animals from April, who seemed to have been involved in some sort of vehicle transport, or medical emergency – since the toy ambulance that Cristina had gotten him was there too – or maybe an alien abduction, since the space ship that Richard had given him, for reasons she couldn't fathom, was out too. "Did he miss me?"

"Cried non-stop," Alex noted sarcastically. "I had to call 9-1-1."

"In other words, he already hates me," she muttered. She didn't blame him, because her date wasn't his father, and she should never have left him home with dirty uncle Sal, who needed adult supervision himself, while possibly hostile aliens were abducting his little plastic sheep and cows, and the stray giraffe which had wandered into the menagerie, and which made her wonder just what the farms in Ohio were doing with exotic African wildlife.

"In other words, he had fun," Alex retorted, not bothering to add that she should have to, since that was more or less implied in his tone.

"I can't do this to him," she said quietly, not quite specifying if she meant Derek, or Jacob, or her date, since all of the above would have worked, if that had been an option.

"Who?" Alex asked, scowling, which drove her crazy, because for a guy who didn't talk much he asked the most annoying questions, at the most annoying times.

"I promised we'd be together forever," she insisted glumly, and half preparing to strangle him if he mentioned that the post-it note still hung over her bed.

"Yeah, me too," he snorted, and she almost laughed, again, because his forever hadn't lasted any longer then hers, and they had both known better to begin with.

"I like April," she said softly, after a studied silence.

"Yeah, me too," he said sheepishly. "Matt's cool," he added, shrugging.

"Yeah," she said, sighing. And he was, and he wanted to be, if she'd let him, and he'd already met her twisted little family, and if crazy aunt Cristina and dirty uncle Sal and a bizarre mob of farm aliens didn't scare him, there might be something there, maybe, someday, or if not him, another guy, maybe, and that scared her more than anything.

"Her family's normal," Alex added grudgingly, "well, neurotic normal," he added.

"Doesn't she have three sisters," Meredith teased, raising her eyebrows at him.

"One of them is like Yang," he said sourly, his face twisting into a grimace.

"Well then you'll be used to her," Meredith teased, "since you already love Cristina," she added, giggling as he scowled.

"Amber called again," he said quietly, after another comfortable silence. "She wants to come here to visit this summer," he said reluctantly, as if he couldn't imagine why.

"Do you want us to move?" Meredith asked, her eye brows raising almost half seriously, because sisters by blood were an entirely different kind of crazy, and he'd been speaking with her regularly since soon after the shootings, and not always on the most pleasant of terms, from what she gathered, and she wondered if this would be Aaron's first visit all over again, the one that had almost ended with their fist fight in the hospital corridor.

"No," he said flatly, and she wondered what no meant, exactly, because his tone was too distant, and his face was unreadable in the dimly lit room.

"Do you want her to come?" she asked finally, and she wondered if this could be Lexi all over again, too, because Lexi had showed up expecting something, too, something she really couldn't give, and he'd known Amber before, sure, but she'd seen it all before, the idea that you owed people something because you shared their DNA, and she was still working out whether she believed that since she was sure she owed Jacob everything but her own biological family was another matter entirely and she imagined his was too.

He finally just nodded, and she watched curiously, because he'd more or less patched things up with Aaron, sort of, usually, but they both knew that sisters were different.

"April said Amber could stay at her place," he added hesitantly, shrugging again "She's all into the family thing," he grumbled, "even though her sisters drive her nuts."

"So we're… good with that?" Meredith asked, almost cringing, as she tried to gauge what she was supposed to say, because they didn't do fine, and they didn't do happy, and they knew better then to hope for anything.

"Yeah," he breathed finally, nodding as he exhaled softly.

"April's meeting your family, too," Meredith teased, a moment later.

"Yeah," he breathed again, his face darkening over once more.

"She likes you, you know," Meredith crooned, watching his face redden.

"Matt likes you," he noted, shrugging again.

"Yeah," she agreed, exhaling and leaning back further into the couch. "So what do we do?" she muttered almost under her breath, and more to herself then to him.

"No freaking clue," he all but whispered, shaking his head again as sports news finally gave way to another familiar Infomercial.

* * *

"Coffee?" Burke asked quietly the following week, sitting back in his office chair and surveying the cup that Cristina had placed on his desk.

"Just coffee," Cristina insisted, dropping into the chair across from him with a smug smirk. "I haven't forgiven you," she added, firmly meeting his eyes.

"For the committee's decision?" he asked calmly, opening the lid and letting the steam rise, as he leaned back in his chair again, gazing at her over his hands, which met in a steady steeple, inches from his face.

"No," Cristina snapped. "I told you I didn't need your help; you didn't help me," she observed, her voice so matter of fact it startled her.

"You said you didn't need me," he corrected, his clipped, precise tones laced with long simmering frustration. "Not Preston Burke," he said sarcastically, drawing the name out as she might. "Me," he growled, his voice beading tiny ice crystals in her veins.

"You left," she reminded him. "I didn't."

"Didn't you?" he prodded, his voice deadly calm, hovering just decibels enough above what she recognized as seething rage. She'd never forgotten that, would never forget that, his voice, every cadence, every timber, every inflection, washing over her like his skin and his lips and his hands, until it took up permanent residence inside her.

"I was there," she snapped, leaning forward furiously. "In the church you chose, in the wedding you chose, in the dress you wanted," she hissed, emphasizing you at each step.

"Of course you were," he snorted, stressing 'you' back at her. "Because Cristina Yang wouldn't want any of that, do I have that right?"

"I was ready to marry you," she retorted, abruptly sitting back again.

"You were ready to appease me," he insisted. "That's not what I wanted, that's never what I wanted."

"Then why are you here?" she demanded suddenly, staring at him with bewildered eyes. "Did you come back for the job, for another chance to be Chief?" Is that's what this has been all along?"

He stood abruptly, before she could move, his hands closing over her face, as his lips pressed into hers, and it was firm and furious and deep, and it reached every inch of her, and set her insides rattling, and it poured over her in waves, like the tears that streaked down her cheeks, and she was gasping and breathless and trembling and dizzy and heated when he finally retreated, his face hovering inches from hers, his eyes boring into her.

"Why are you here?" she whispered again, her hand seizing his wrist, and it was all there all over again, the coffee that had never been just coffee, the sex that had never been just sex, the feel of his skin and the taste of his lips and the shimmer of his eyes and the timber of his words as they echoed through her and the scent that never left her clothes, that drove her from her apartment, and the sheer heat of his body, radiating centimeters from her, which threatened to engulf her all over again, leaving nothing but ashes.

"For you," he announced flatly, as if they were the only words in his vocabulary, and it was madness again, sheer madness, because she planned everything, and her life was to read like a resume, a resume where any man could be nothing but a footnote, and she wasn't going to be just a line on his dossier, or anyone else's, and it was madness all over again, because his fingers were electric and his touch shredded any plans.

"I'm not-" she started, tears still streaming from her, and she wasn't the type of woman who married a man like him, a man whose mere shadow threatened to consume her, and she wasn't the type of woman who trembled at the hint of a kiss or shivered at the slight rustle of fabric or sank to her knees in a fevered, heated mass of tangled curls, and she wasn't the type of woman who would moan at the bare hint of lips on skin.

"I'm not-" she protested again, her limp arms pressing weakly against his chest until her hands slid over smooth, sculpted muscle and she wasn't the type of woman who gasped at a mere puff of warm breath on flesh once the clasp of her bra gave way and she wasn't the type to claw at his scrubs until they joined hers in a heap beside them on the floor and she wasn't the type to shiver violently beneath him while his hands just teased her thighs.

"I'm not-" she muttered, and she wasn't, not anymore, she wasn't the unshakable Cristina Yang, the one he must have come back for, whose hands were rock solid, because she'd died in a bloody OR room over a year ago, and she couldn't be whoever was left over, the type who quivered at his touch and writhed beneath his fingers and gasped breathlessly as his lips followed, rocking against him in a rush of violent waves.

"I'm not-" she gaped, her bleary eyes flying open as he slid smoothly into her, a blinding white heat rocketing through her body as her hands reflexively dug into his hips, pulling insistently as spasm after spasm rocked them and her legs coiled around him like steel cables and she wasn't the type to shriek someone's name, especially not his, anyone's but his, and it just spurted out anyway in shuddering hiccups, over and over and over again.

"I'm not-" she groaned, her voice drowned out again by his agonizing moans, and she wasn't the type of woman to draw that much blood, though his back was scraped raw, and she wasn't the type to sink her teeth into his thick neck and she wasn't the type to laugh manically as he finally thundered through her, like a small boat ripped clear of its moorings by a gushing tidal wave and she wasn't the type to shudder and howl and sob and drag him closer as he collapsed on top of her, or to seize his face in her hands, or to shiver all over again, as his lips washed over her again and again and again.

"I'm not-" she gasped frantically, as his body pressed against hers, still shaking violently, and she wasn't the type to test every curve and every sinew and she wasn't the type to wrap her arms and her legs determinedly around him, clinging to him as if for her life, and she wasn't the type to moan softly afterwards, as his strong fingers and his soft lips continued their travels, and she wasn't the type shiver violently at the mere hint of his breath on her neck, or the ghosting of his hands as he wrapped insistently around her.

"I'm not-" she sobbed again, and she wasn't, because she'd failed at the only thing that ever mattered to her, and Mere was a post-it widow, and Alex nearly died in an elevator, and none of it had gone according to plan, and he wasn't supposed to be here, and she was supposed to know what to do, because she always knew what to do, and it was all just wave after of blood and screaming and red streaked wedding dresses.

"I'm not-" she gasped, wide eyed and frantic again, and she wasn't, because the gun was at her head again, cold steel like a scalpel, glinting in the harsh OR lighting, and it had been there all over again, he'd been there all over again, his hands and his lips and his skin and his voice and his body, every curve and sinew, and she couldn't have even screamed, or it would have been his name, over and over and over again.

"I'm not-" she gasped, and he just pulled her closer, and it was the acrid smell of gun smoke all over again, and he was lying on the gurney, and she'd left him, left him when he was reaching for her, and she just clutched at him harder, because he was gone again, in another hail of gun fire.

"Don't leave," she gasped, grabbing him even tighter, and she wasn't the type of woman who needed anyone, especially not him, and she wasn't the type of woman who needed anything, and she never failed, and she never feared, and tears never streaked her face.

"Where would I go?" he asked quietly, his skilled hands untangling her hair, which spilled over his shoulders in wild waves, as his fingers brushed delicately across her cheeks, smoothing rivers of water into her smooth skin, as his calm eyes met hers.

"I'm not-" she whispered again, and she wasn't, she couldn't be, and she never would be.

"You are," he insisted, a slight smile teasing his lips before they covered hers again, as another deep moan rippled through her. "Was that a yes," he asked moments later, the same bemused expression flashing as he wrapped his arms more tightly around her.

* * *

"I told them everything," April said quietly, crawling into his bed. It still made her slightly nervous when they stayed at his place, Meredith's place, that someone might hear them; then again, they said it was a brothel, though, really, she couldn't imagine that Meredith's mother would have approved, not that there weren't stories about her, either.

"Even about twenty six?" he teased, smirking as her eyes flew open.

"Of course not," she gasped, swatting him sharply. "About everything else, though," she admitted. "I hate lying, anyway."

"And you suck at it," Alex noted, which she did, since she turned seven shades of red, and her voice wavered and her hands shook and she was like a human polygraph.

"I think they like you," she teased, "even though Cristina says you're an Evil Spawn."

"You know she trades sex for surgeries, right?" Alex grumbled, sure that April had been spending too much time with the girls, since she was starting to sound like them.

"I thought my mother would be more… surprised, I guess," she added.

"Or horrified?" he prodded, rolling his eyes.

"That, too," she agreed, nodding seriously. "I think she's just given up on getting grand children from any of her other daughters, though," she added. "I may be her last hope."

"And no," she added abruptly, sure she'd heard him exhale sharply. "I'm not. "I'm very careful," she added smugly. That was Reed's first rule, don't be stupid. "She already knows you're a Peads surgeon though," she pointed out, laughing.

"Tell her I hate kids," he growled, scowling. "I just do Peads because it's smaller bodies, quicker surgeries, you know, more time on the golf course," he insisted.

"Of course," she agreed seriously, and she might have believed it, except that smaller bodies led to trickier surgeries, and he always called golf a glorified gopher hunt when they showed high lights on ESPN, and he sort of sucked at lying, too.

"I could still go back to Plastics," he said, pulling her closer, "make pots of money." And she almost winced, because she'd just seen Dani dance again, and Dani was tall and thin like their father and always would be, and April loved her mother, usually, but, honestly, she wished she'd gotten more from her father's side of the family then the ability to draw amoeba and arteries with perfect perspective, no offense to her grandmother.

"Would I get a free boob job?" she asked, frowning as she assessed the situation, and he almost frowned, too, because those surgeries were great when they worked – high and firm and round and he'd seen the chicks who came in for their follow ups, all proud and puffed up and daring anyone to look and to touch. They fixed some disasters, too, though, boobs hard as softballs under too tightly stretched skin, or puckered and stiff, or cold to the touch or lined with nerve damage and scar tissue, lifeless like a mannequin's.

"You mean like this?" he smirked, as the clasp of her bra abruptly gave way and it still felt like it had that first night, sometimes, when she wasn't expecting it, like she was in free fall until his hands and his lips closed around her and she was gasping and it all went hazy and she was sure she was dissolving and that the whole neighborhood would hear her and it was only one quick flick of his tongue before the entire house shook.

"Sex kitten," he taunted, growling low against her ear as he teased her still quivering flesh and it wasn't like she could argue since she'd come from just a quick flick across one boob and that was all it took to get her moaning and shrieking and squirming.

"Yeah," she gasped moments later, and she couldn't argue because she'd wondered the first time, and the second, maybe even the fourth, if she jiggled too much everywhere except on top and she remembered even Reed peering wistfully at implant photos but they'd read about boobs that… that worked all by themselves, well almost, and she wondered if maybe she got that from that her father's side, too, though she could never ask her grandmother that, and she wondered sometimes if maybe they needed something like the tickle truce for that, since they were still quivering in his hands.

"And for the record," he noted smugly, tracing his fingers over her, "we're pretty much happy with naked," and he wondered if she knew the half of it, because whips and high heels and chairs and magazines were fun and all, and he'd have never come up with thirty seven on his own, but sometimes it was cool just to improvise.

"I'll keep that in mind," she gasped, squirming again with a deep, agonizing moan, "for my next boyfriend," and she could, because she no longer winced when his body rippled against hers, and she no longer searched frantically for pillows to hide behind, and she still added to notes and diagrams, but now they were more just for fun, and she no longer cowered quite so much at the thought that someone might hear her, as he slid deeper into her again and again, smooth and firm and insistent, though she didn't want to be rude, if it was late, or Meredith's baby was sleeping, or someone had an early surgery.

"Don't forget to warn him about thirty eight," he muttered into her chest, almost drifting off to sleep, and he could warn the guy about a whole lot more, though she wasn't crazy, just neurotic, and her sisters were annoying, but no more then Mere and Yang, and it wasn't like she expected Phil to talk back to her, or named all the stupid little birds she that she fed on the windowsills, even if they were always squawking way too early, and anyone raised on a farm should freaking know that.

"I will," she agreed sleepily, brushing her lips casually against his hair, because he'd slept there often enough before that she wasn't terrified any longer, as she'd been the first few times, that she'd droop too much or jiggle too little or actually pop even though she'd never had implants, or that her breathing might wake him, and then he'd notice that her left boob was almost an inch wider around then the right - she'd measured – that is, unless her heart beat didn't erupt right through her chest first, fracturing his nose.

That never really happened, though, and she kind of stopped worrying about it after the first few times she woke all folded up with him, and Reed was definitely wrong about that part, and she wondered if maybe he was right, that Cristina was just jealous about the noises coming from his bedroom, and she sort of didn't mind that she was a branch on the SGH-MW grape vine now, now that there was actually something to say.

"I told her about your divorce, too," she added, almost cringing, and she watched almost hesitantly as his eyes peeled lazily half open, and she wondered if he'd understand that she had to tell her, because it might come up some day, not that it would, necessarily, but it might, and she liked to be prepared, which he already knew, technically, since he'd seen her travel bag, and the safety kit she kept in her car, for floods and earthquakes, and the stock pile of extra plant food she kept for Phil, because you never knew when it might snow, or flood, and he depended on her, and it didn't take up much room, anyway.

"Don't worry," she insisted, shaking her head before he could say anything. "I told her everything."

"Everything?" he echoed, baffled, and he wondered what that could possibly be, since he didn't understand it himself.

"Yeah," she said, nodding seriously. "I told her you married your girl friend when she was dying," she said, "and when she got better she left," she shrugged. "She understood."

"She did?" Alex scowled skeptically, since it made even less to hear her describe it out loud, as if that was even possible.

"Yeah," April agreed, nodding again. "She thinks you're a romantic sap," she added, giggling as his eyes narrowed and a strangled grimace crossed his face.

"I told her you're not at all," she reassured him, rolling her eyes and laughing again. And he wasn't., at all, because she'd read about that too, and the only candles they had were in her emergency black out kit, and he thought flowers were just over-priced weeds, and she liked him and all, but charm wasn't exactly his thing, and she sort of saw Cristina's point, sometimes, and agreed that Evil Spawn wasn't too far off.

"So you really didn't tell he about thirty eight," he smirked sleepily.

"During the Ohio State Game?" she shrieked, turning abruptly, out-raged, and shoving him out of the bed, nodding approvingly at the solid thud as he hit the floor.

"What?" he scowled, his question muffled as a pillow landed on his face.

"That's just sick," she retorted, rolling over and turning out the last light.


	9. Chapter 9

_Standard disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual._

* * *

"Where is everybody?" Meredith asked the following month, walking into the kitchen as she juggled Jacob and two plastic bags.

"At the florist with Bridezilla," he said, briefly looking up from the sports pages spread across the table. "They're bringing pizza," he added, smirking as Jacob giggled and clapped his hands excitedly.

"Tell me his first big word isn't going to be pepperoni," Meredith grumbled, handing him to Alex as she went to put away her purse and unpack the plastic sacks. "He should be eating all organic, all whole grain, lots of vegetables," she insisted, turning around just in time to see Alex splitting an Oreo with him.

"He likes vegetables," Alex retorted, as Jacob smeared the cream from the cookie over his fingers, licking happily at them.

"Amber went with them, too?' she asked suddenly, glancing around and listening, as an unusual calm permeated the house. "Your sister, your girl friend, and Cristina, all went to pick out wedding flowers," she asked, staring at him incredulously.

"And Burke," he reminded her, offering Jacob another cookie.

"That's not good," Meredith agreed quietly, because Cristina and Burke had decided to split the wedding arrangements fifty-fifty, but hadn't actually agreed on who would be in charge of what, which so far had led to one caterer fleeing in tears, one near food fight, and a bizarrely detailed spat over place settings, which would have finished off most couples right there, but was just a weird kind of foreplay for them.

"I know," Alex agreed, scowling. "They like each other," he added with a grimace."

"They're a lot alike," Meredith pointed out, giggling as his face darkened, because Amber was intense and opinionated and ambitious and something of a perfectionist and plainly the sister that Cristina would have had, if her parents had had another daughter.

"Ugh," he scowled, exhaling as he glanced at Jacob, who just smiled and gurgled and giggled at him, and reached eagerly for his milk glass.

"She's great with Jacob," Meredith noted, which figured, since Amber had worked in a day car center after school, and a camp the previous summer, and she wanted to be a nurse. "She's almost as good a baby sitter as you," she teased, watching him scowl.

"I don't baby sit," he reminded her, switching Jacob to his other side. "And she's just a kid."

"So are you," Meredith taunted, "and I let you watch him." She almost laughed again, but they were interrupted when the door burst open, to the usual strains of Cristina and Burke arguing, while April tried futilely to referee, and Amber just rolled her eyes.

"Red roses are classic, romantic," Burke insisted, setting several pizza boxes on the large table. "They symbolize elegance, timeless love-"

"Blood," Cristina interrupted bluntly, glancing rapidly around the room as if she expected everyone to agree with her.

"How about carnations?" April volunteered politely, still searching for a compromise.

"Weeds," Alex insisted, already digging into the pizza as April just rolled her eyes at him.

"White roses," Amber announced definitively, grabbing a plate and a chair next to Alex.

"Peeppiiiiizza," Jacob added, clapping happily as he grabbed for Alex's stringy cheese.

"We already settled on the menu," Cristina replied immediately, before realizing who she was even responding to.

"Not the wine list," Burke reminded her calmly, taking his own plate and searching a nearby drawer for some silverware.

"Dude," Amber chimed in as he sat at the table, "who eats pizza with a fork?"

"Burke," they all said in unison, as he looked up, confused.

"So, it was pretty cool, today, at the hospital," Amber observed quietly moments later, watching Alex closely as he broke up the pizza boxes for the recycling bin. "I watched Cristina and Burke replace a heart valve."

"I'm thinking of applying to the summer program," she added, leaning back against the counter. "Cristina said it would look good, if I decide to apply to nursing school."

"Good," Alex said, nodding nervously. "That's good," he repeated awkwardly, not quite looking up.

"Are you mad that I'm here," she asked finally. "Because Aaron can come-"

"No, no," Alex insisted, shaking his head. "It's, it's good."

"You keep saying that," she grumbled, crossing her arms across her chest, and it sounded so familiar that it startled him. "April said you think I'm mad at you," she added, after an awkward silence. "You could have said so," she insisted, studying him again as she met more uncomfortable silence. "You could say… something," she prodded impatiently.

"Are you?" he asked finally, sizing her up again, because she was his mother's smile and his father's build and eyes that looked entirely too familiar, and she was Yang with the attitude and Mere with the quite strength that just radiated from her and April when she played with Jacob and the whole package just stared at him as if she expected something from him and whatever it was he was sure he didn't have it to give.

"I was," she agreed bluntly. "Maybe I still am, I don't know," she admitted, shrugging.

"I had this picture of you in my head after you left," she said sharply, after another strained silence. "I used to wonder what you were doing, why you just left us there."

"I didn't exactly have a choice," he muttered, which was just true enough to be an excuse, he imagined, though it could never really count as an explanation, when the whole crazy situation had never made sense to begin with, and probably never would.

"Yes you did," she retorted, leveling a stern stare at him. "But I don't blame you," she added grudgingly. "We weren't your problem, and you had to get out of there. And hey," she smirked, "you're a surgeon."

"I tell everybody," she added, shrugging again and eying him shyly. "My brother's a surgeon," she said, smirking again, "how cool is that?"

"Pretty cool, I guess," he agreed, matching her smirk.

"I know what you do for mom," she said quietly, playing nervously with her fingers, "and for Aaron and me," she added.

"I didn't just walk away," he retorted

"I know," she said softly. "But that's what it felt like."

Alex just nodded, glancing briefly down at his shoes. That he got, the feeling of people walking away; sometimes, that was the only feeling he got.

"It was different after you got shot, though," she said. "Aaron didn't want to worry mom, or me, I guess. But when I found out how bad it was, I wanted to see you. I didn't know if you'd want me to come," she shrugged, "since we hadn't seen you in so long."

"Iowa's not exactly across the street," he said gruffly, which was true, and false, and an excuse, and an explanation, all rolled into one, for all of them.

"You're still my brother," she said finally. "We kind of suck at this," she observed, her own eyes gazing at the floor, in response to the awkward silence.

"I want to come back," she said finally, peeking back up again. "I like your friends, and I want to go to the program Cristina told me about, if they'll take me."

"Good," he agreed quickly. "That's good," he repeated, nodding seriously, slightly wide eyed and slightly bewildered.

"I like April, too," she teased, eying him closely. "But who's Phil?"

"Long story," he grumbled, rolling his eyes as he followed her into the living room, where everyone else was still debating place settings.

* * *

"I'll show you mine if you show me yours," Meredith muttered, leaning back against the day bed in the nursery, where she sat on the brightly colored carpeted floor beside Alex, who sprawled face down amid piles of blocks and plastic cowboys on horses, and several spare pieces to a toy that Meredith was sure she didn't recognize.

"Matt still not putting out?" he muttered, half into the plush pile, as Meredith swatted him and Cristina chortled from atop the bed.

"They're taking it s-l-o-w," Cristina noted sarcastically, still scanning the paper in her hands. "Like, as in he'll need the little blue pills by the time-"

"Cristina," Meredith snapped, glaring back up at her. "What did I tell you?"

"No sex talk in front of Jacob," she repeated by rote, rolling her eyes. "Even when he's asleep," she added, scowling, at Meredith's silent prodding. "And when he's old enough, we tell him the stork brought him," she snickered, motioning to Alex.

"Double board certification," Alex mumbled smugly, still almost asleep as he fingered his letter, which described his Fellowship in pediatric and neo-natal surgery. It was just prestigious enough to gall her, even if he was a professional baby sitter.

"Neurosurgery," Meredith added gleefully, waving her own letter around as if there had ever been any doubt. It would hit her the next day, she was sure, that now she had an even bigger scheduling problem, and an even more demanding job. But she wanted to enjoy it for a moment, before the reality of full time day care, and then some, sank in.

"Cardio," Cristina said flatly, and that was the easy part, because she still wasn't Chief Resident, and she'd never hear the end of that, and she was still the best at the hospital, maybe, but it was harder to be the best when you weren't handed the trophy out right, and it all blended in with wedding dress selection and embossed invitations in twelve shades of beige and there was no point even framing the letter, which out-lined her training responsibilities and salary and expected work hours, but wasn't exactly a gold star.

"We made it," Meredith whispered, drawing her finger over the letterhead, and she wondered what that meant exactly, because lunches would still be the same and there was still a wedding to plan and Alex was still corrupting her son and nothing was exactly what she'd expected it to be, not that they'd ever expected a hail of bullets, either.

"Speak for your-self," Cristina grumbled. "I still have to pick what style print I want on the place sittings. Who cares about that stuff, anyway?" she demanded.

"April," Alex reminded her sleepily, because she was helping with the planning, not that she put much thought into these things, she assured him, it was just polite and well, she and Cristina were sort of friends now and she wasn't so scary anymore, not after you'd seen her hesitantly modeling a bridal veil as her mother lectured sternly, and he'd stopped listening between her comments about green or clear vases and dried fruit center pieces.

"Burke," Meredith echoed, because she was inches away from suggesting City Hall except that that would never be Burke, and Cristina would never admit that she actually wanted the fancy ceremony this time, too, and Meredith was sure that they'd want the same things if they'd just stop to listen to each other. But then they wouldn't be them and it was all foreplay with them anyway and she just hoped they'd get down the aisle this time, or there would just be another, and another, because their being a 'them' was as inevitable as Cristina in Cardio even if they were both too stubborn to see that.

"Maybe they should get married, then," Cristina scoffed, and she could almost imagine Alex's sex kitten with Burke, Burke and the mob of kids they'd have, but April was entirely too sweet, even if surprisingly kinky, and she'd never be enough of a challenge for him, though his mother would probably love her, minus the magazines.

"Why don't you have separate weddings?" Alex muttered, which earned him a snort from Cristina and another hissed "we're being supportive" from Meredith.

"Besides," Meredith added flatly, "the wedding will be over by the time we start our Fellowships and I'll still have to raise my son by myself," she insisted

"Matt's really not putting out," Cristina muttered under her breath again.

"What are we?" Alex mumbled into the carpet simultaneously.

"Dirty uncle Sal and cranky aunt Cristina," Meredith reminded him, giggling because it was three a.m. and they'd all worked long shifts and they were entirely too sober and it was the last way in the world she'd ever imagined celebrating her fellowship appointment and it wasn't how things were supposed to be at all, well mostly.

"He likes me best," Alex smirked sleepily.

"Of course he does," Cristina chortled again. "You're the stork; you made him, by magic."

"That's a story he's never going to hear," Meredith insisted immediately, grimacing and shaking her head again. And he wasn't, because she'd finished the scrap book, at least, and he'd know who his father was, and he'd know how much he was wanted, and loved, by both of them, or would have been, and he'd know how much his mother loved both of them, and how much she missed the man who he looked more and more like every day.

"I like it," Alex observed, nodding seriously, though his eyes were already bleary and half shut, and he would, Meredith thought with a smirk, because she was sure that the little plastic cowboys weren't making all those voices by themselves, before she poked her head in to remind him it was past Jacob's bed time and that they could defend their fort the next day, and she was sure she'd have lost her mind long ago, if Jacob's arms hadn't slid so easily around him from day one, even if he was no freaking baby sitter.

"Pathetic," Cristina snickered though a fierce yawn, and Meredith wondered if that applied to her, because they were right about Matt, and she'd promised herself that she'd never be her mother, and that surgery would never be her whole life – which it wasn't, she reminded herself fiercely, since Jacob would always come first – except that a year of sixty hour work weeks was coming, and it was a great excuse to keep Matt at bay, and a great excuse to accept that day care was inevitable, and a wonderful distraction from the fact that Derek wasn't coming back, no matter how much they might need him.

She fingered her letter again, smirking as Cristina snored noisily on the bed, while Alex scowled up at her, still bleary eyed and half asleep. "Wyatt says I need to move on," she muttered under her breath, half hoping he wouldn't hear her, and the 'he' could have been Derek or Matt just as easily as Alex, since they'd probably all think she was pathetic, not that she'd blame them, since she should have known better from the start.

"Matt's cool," Alex mumbled finally, and she almost giggled, because Alex was the one who suggested the background check, and Alex was the one who badgered him about whether he knew child CPR, though they were just taking Jacob to the park.

"So is April," Meredith said quietly, smirking at his sleepy smile, and she wondered if he had any idea how deep he was in, and how long it would take April to break it to him, that they were sort of inevitable, too.

"Maybe Wyatt's right," he mumbled, and she shook her head twice before she added 'get ears checked' to her mental to do list, because this was all making her feel very old, and her Alex couldn't possibly have said that, and she suddenly wondered if the other two were as sober or as they claimed, or if maybe those were drunken plastic cowboys she'd heard – since he was already snoring softly into the carpet, before her shock wore off.

* * *

"Do you like it?" Burke asked weeks later, watching as she set her coffee cup on the seat beside her and turned the ring over in her fingers, studying it intently. "It was my grandmother's," he added casually, sipping from his own cup as the wind blew around them, while the Ferry chugged leisurely around the Bay.

"If you'd prefer something more modern-?" he finally prodded, frowning as she continued her inspection, the sun light glinting off the polished metal, as if skipping across the glassy water, which shimmered around them as far as they could see.

"Your mother gave you this?" she asked skeptically, finally turning to look at him. "She hates me." Mama Burke was part of the equation, had always been part of the equation, and still made her shudder, with her out dated ideas about husbands and wives, and her crisply tailored clothes, and her highly inflated opinion of her only son.

"She doesn't hate you," he protested, another small smile tugging at his lips. "She just doesn't understand you," he observed, which was true, as far as he could tell. Then again, she'd never understood any of the women he introduced to her, and she was as stubborn and discriminating and uncompromising as Cristina herself.

"She hates me," Cristina repeated, shaking her head, and he imagined that that was close to the truth, too, and that it was probably a good thing that his mother lived across the country, and he was starting to understand, after all these years, why his father would just whisper and nod and smile pleasantly, when his mother had made up her mind.

"She'll come around," he said, shrugging casually, and he didn't bother to add that it might not happen in their life times, since his mother was firm in her opinions and slow to reconsider them and she had expectations that no amount of reality could shake.

"She offered to teach me how to cook," Cristina snorted, scowling at him.

"I cook our meals," he reminded her, which was entirely beside the point, they both knew, because his mother had expectations, and understandings about who did what in a marriage, and Cristina's inability to boil water, and her indifference to and spices and silver ware patterns and crystal stem ware was a referendum on her character and her worth and her fittingness to be his wife, cardiothoracic surgeon or not.

"My mother hates you," she announced abruptly, the wind blowing her wild curls in every direction as she peered mischievously at him.

"That's impossible," he scoffed, shaking his head. "Mother's always love me."

That was probably true, Cristina imagined, because he was polite and cultured and talented and ambitious and accomplished. He was Preston Burke, her mother's ideal, since he would slip seamlessly into her mother's social calendar, and would know just what fork to use at every meal, and just what to say at every cocktail party, and he would dress impeccably, and order the right wine, and speak diplomatically, and he could sport his impressive credentials on an embossed business card, and he would know whose jokes to laugh at, and the ingredients of every gourmet dish, and he could share recipes and tips with the vapid wives of her step father's colleagues, and business tips with their husbands, as they exchanged pleasantries.

Her mother already liked Burke more then her, Cristina imagined, since she was thrilled that she'd won him back, as if he were a trophy, even after their previous wedding fiasco, and she imagined that her mother had more in common with Mama Burke, then either of the women would ever have with her.

"I'm sure she'd like that ring," he observed, eying her again as his voice rumbled around her, and he was probably right, because her mother loved shiny baubles. They were her whole life - that was her whole life - keeping up appearances, the right dress and the right drapes and the right address in Beverly Hills. Her mother's life, her life's work, measured in window treatments and vases and divans, was an exercise in trivia.

"That's all she'll care about," Cristina muttered, almost under her breath. "The flowers and the dress and the place settings," she listed, rolling her eyes. "As long as it looks good, she'll be happy," she added, motioning to the ring, "as if any of this stuff matters."

"Some of it does," he said quietly, and she knew that it did to him, that even he was more like her mother then she was, and closer to meeting her expectations, of how things should be, how people should be, how life should be.

"How?" she demanded suddenly, turning abruptly and raising her eyebrows. "Red or white flowers, chicken or beef, yellow gold or white, how does any other matter? It's just a ceremony, one day, a few hours," she insisted.

"It's not just a ceremony," he protested, eyeing her closely again. "It's a promise, to our selves, to our friends and our families, a vow that we'll be together forever."

"My parents had a ceremony," she grumbled. "A lot of good it did them." She'd seen the pictures, of her parents, seen her mother's scrapbook, seen the wedding dress itself, still wrapped in tissue and plastic, and stored in the back of her mother's closet, even all these years after her father's death. It was almost all she had left of him.

"He died," Burke reminded her pointedly. "It wasn't like they just walked away from each other."

It wasn't like that at all, she knew, since she'd seen him die with her own eyes, and she wondered, sometimes, if that's what did it, what turned her mother into the silly, shallow shell who seemed too busy arranging the overly ornate flowers and the lengthy funeral procession and the maudlin music to notice that her husband had died.

"He died," she repeated blankly, and she wondered if that had been her mother's escape, her love for the transitory and the ephemeral, for fashions that changed seasonally, and social events that came and went in a blur, and gossip than changed with the company, none of it real, none of it meaningful, none of it life and death.

"She needed him," Cristina said suddenly, gazing back at him again. "My mother, she needed him, and he died." She didn't add that she wondered, sometimes, if her mother hadn't died too, back then, because she still refused to believe that her mother had always been that woman, the woman who measured her life by a packed social calendar, and an up dated seating arrangement, and the size of the tiles in the hall bath.

"She became someone else," she continued, "after he funeral. She… she decorated his casket," Cristina scowled. "She, she just didn't deal with it," she added, shrugging, "she just got lost in the ceremony."

"Did you?" he asked finally, after a lengthy silence, watching her closely again as he closed his fingers more tightly around his coffee cup.

"Me?" she snorted, looking at him incredulously. "I couldn't care less about flowers."

"No," he agreed, interrupting her firmly. "You care about resumes, and awards, and being number one," he added sarcastically.

"I want to be the best," she retorted, glaring at him.

"Are you?" he challenged, his eyes boring into her.

"Yes," she said immediately, though her answer was automatic, and her conviction wavered in the light breeze, and her voice didn't quite sound like hers.

"Then why do you care what people think?" he asked. "Does it matter if you're Chief Resident, or win an award, if you know you're the best?"

"That's different," she snapped, and it was, and it had to be, because she wasn't her mother, and this wasn't even about her, it was about him, and their mothers, and the ring, and the ceremony they were all so invested in, as if it meant anything.

"How?" he snickered, raising his eye brows at you. "She decorates wedding halls, you decorate your resume. What's the difference?" he demanded.

"I save lives," she snapped, staring back at him with a baffled frown.

"That has nothing to do with being Chief Resident," he pointed out. "Or does your success only matter when someone else recognizes it, or gives you a prize?"

"That's ridiculous," she protested. "If she fails, somebody's carpet clashes with their slip covers," she snorted. "If I fail, somebody dies."

"What happens if we fail?" he asked quietly, gazing across the water again.

"We won't," she snapped finally, glaring down at the deck again.

"That's what this means," he said softly, reaching across to her hand and brushing his fingers over the metal band she still held. "My grandmother was married for over fifty years," he added a moment later.

"Was she a surgeon?" Cristina asked reluctantly.

"She could have been," he smirked. "She was stubborn, and opinionated, and determined, and she knew her own mind."

"She sounds like your mother," Cristina grumbled.

"There's a resemblance," he agreed, nodding and finishing off his coffee, as another smile tugged at his lips.

"We're still not getting red roses," she insisted, settling back into his arms and studying the ring closely again.

"I didn't think so," he said flatly, his arms closing around her as the Ferry returned to the dock, while his eyes still scanned the shimmering horizon. He didn't, really, and he knew the battle would continue, and he'd known what he was signing up for the moment he'd picked up the phone, the moment he'd realized that he couldn't live without it, either, that it was just who they were, and always would be, always had to be.

"I like it," she announced finally, later that evening, her legs drawn under her as she perched on the couch, turning the ring in her fingers again. It shimmered in the twilight, lit faintly by the candles from their dinner, and the steel grey dusk that streamed in through the huge windows, as the sky line loomed placidly in the distance.

"Because it was my grandmother's?" he asked, his tone teasing, and she laughed, because she didn't believe in Karma, and tradition for the sake of tradition was just lazy, and she could imagine what he had to do to wrest it from Mama Burke, who they both knew wouldn't give up anything, particularly her prized only son, without a fight.

"It's simple," she said, shrugging slightly as his arms slid closer around her. "It gets to the point," she added, a moment later, leaning into him, until she could feel his heartbeat against her. It was the only thing she ever really trusted, anyway, the only honest sound she could imagine, after every word from Owen had become another lie.

"I like simple," he agreed flatly, surveying the clean lines of his large high rise condo. They both did, he knew, they liked sleek furnishings, and smooth jazz, and clear surgical fields, after all the clutter had been carved away. "That's why I bought this place," he reminded her quietly. "I assumed you'd like it," he observed serenely.

"I do," she agreed smugly, and it was as much of a vow as she needed, and it echoed around them as he lowered her to the floor, and it wasn't frantic and desperate, the way it had been in his office months before, before they fell back into a familiar choreography.

"What was that?" he smirked, as his fingers and his lips worked their way leisurely down her body.

"I do," she breathed again, over and over, gasping and moaning and writhing beneath him, because it was always easier when the tuxes and the rings and the veils just dropped away, and he'd always be who she saw as another tsunami ripped through her, and it would always be his name on her lips, as her trembling body coiled reflexively around him, and it would always be his blood under her nails, as her claws dug into his body.

"So, about the flowers-" he taunted moments later, trailing his strong hands over her still quivering flesh, "I was still thinking red-"

"Not a chance," she gasped, abruptly flipping him over and chortling again, like a crazrd banshee, as he squirmed under her own skilled fingers.

* * *

"So what are we celebrating?" Alex asked, surveying April's bag suspiciously, as she dug out several food containers, and plastic utensils, and a small, brightly decorated cake that almost made him drool. That was all her message had said, but her last "celebration" had been about Phil's new shoots, which would have been completely ridiculous, except that it had merited apple pie, with strawberry ice cream, which he'd never refuse on principle, even if weeds were always knocked up or whatever they got, as far as he could tell.

"Your fellowship," April said cheerfully, pilling out some napkins. She hadn't made a big deal about it at the time, especially since Meredith and Cristina still teased him, and she knew how that could be. But he really was awesome in Peads, and she'd told him that many times, and she couldn't help that she was proud of him.

"That was months ago," he pointed out, frowning at the containers she was opening, and almost hoping that that smell was actually coming from a car exhaust or something, since they were seated at an outside table in the hospital's atrium.

"And Cristina's engagement," she added casually, unwrapping the spoons and forks. That was more like a minor miracle, actually, because Cristina was Cristina, and still sort of scary even if they were friends now, and her and Burke were loud, really loud, even when they weren't doing anything remotely related to the magazines she'd lent her.

"They'll never make it down the aisle," he retorted skeptically, shaking his head.

He wasn't into weddings, she knew; then again, most guys weren't, except maybe Burke, and it wasn't like she blamed him, since his ex-wife left him with a note. She'd never get that, exactly, not that she was one to judge, but she couldn't ever imagine doing that to anyone, and sure she always left him notes on her nightstand when she left before him in the morning, but that was just so he'd know where she went, well, that, and because Reed really had been wrong about the morning thing, not that April was one to say 'I told you so', except maybe with Alex, because sometimes he deserved it.

"They already picked place settings," she corrected, as if that meant they were guaranteed fifty years of marital bliss. "And Amber's acceptance into the summer program," she added happily, placing a paper plate in front of him.

She'd offered Amber a place to stay, even, since she had a spare room, and it was only for two weeks, and it wasn't like she meant to intervene or anything, but Amber was a lot like Beth, and she was sure they'd work it out if they just spent some time together, and she was sure Amber would like him, once she gave him a chance, because Meredith had been right about him being not as scary once you got past the bristly parts.

"She still hates me," he insisted, grimacing as she scooped half of something vaguely meat like onto his dish, along with a mass of what could be vegetables, or maybe Phil's future kids, or sea weed from the Bay, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know, since it never really helped to know the name of something that started out smelling like that.

"She does not," April retorted, looking up casually after filling her own plate. "I talk to her, too, you know. She's excited to come back," April noted. How could she not be, April wondered, because it was always exciting when you knew what you wanted to do, like when she'd decided to stick with Dr. Bailey and pursue general surgery, even though Bailey still made everyone jump, not that Alex hadn't been right about her, because she really was an awesome teacher once you got used to the glaring and the scowls.

"She's still mad at me," he pointed out, poking cautiously at the orange and green clump on the edge of his dish. He'd learned the hard way to never trust a food by its color, but orange had a decent track record, well, usually, at least in his experience.

"Give her time," April repeated, digging into her own lunch. Not that he was the most patient person, she thought, almost rolling her eyes, but he was with Jacob, and with the kids in Peads, and Amber probably looked up to him, even if he didn't see that yet, since he was her big brother, and that's just how those things worked.

"Right," he grumbled, tentatively sniffing at the food in front of him. He'd heard people say that before, about a lot of things; he'd never understood why, and that's why she was mad at him in the first place, anyway, because she hadn't heard from him in so long, and it wasn't like he had much to say to her, now, any more then he had years before, and whatever it was she wanted from him, he was pretty sure time wasn't it.

"She'll be mad until she decides not to be," April added, shrugging. "It's a sister thing," she insisted. "Like you and Meredith, or Cristina," she added, as she watched him sputter, with a mischievous giggle. It was the worst thing she could say and she knew it, because Amber reminded him of Cristina, and they squabbled like Dani and Beth, though they drew less blood, she remembered with a wince, and they'd never knocked a door clear off its hinges, or shoved each other out of a moving car, at least, not as far as she knew.

"That's just wrong," he scowled, glaring at her.

"You're in Cristina's wedding," April pointed out, giggling again. "And she visited you all the time when you were in the hospital, and you help Meredith all the time with Jacob, and you guys are always-" she continued.

"That doesn't mean I… that we…" he interrupted, sputtering again.

"Yeah, it does," she insisted. "You drive each other crazy, but you couldn't do without them, either," she stated, her voice matter of fact as she continued to eat. "That's how it is with sisters," she added, shrugging. "I have three of them," she reminded him.

"I walked out on Amber," he noted more quietly. "I've never done that with Mere."

He couldn't imagine doing that to Mere, actually, and never to Jacob, since the kid needed someone who wouldn't obsess over his split ends, and Mere would freak if anything happened to Yang, but that was all entirely different.

"You wouldn't," she agreed, "at least, I don't think so. Amber will see that, too, some day, that she can count on you," April indicated. "And you can actually do something for her now," she pointed out.

That was true, he imagined. He couldn't undo what he'd done, but he could help her now, maybe. He couldn't be the brother she'd needed, but he could help her with the program, help her get around the hospital, talk to the nurse in charge, maybe even talk to Bailey.

"You're not eating," she prodded, eying him expectantly. It wasn't like she cooked much, or, okay, at all really, since slice and bake cookies were about the extent of her abilities, and she had no time. But she wondered sometimes if it made her a bad girl friend, that he turned vaguely green at the sight of her Tupperware – not that she'd technically cooked this meal, either, just picked it up from the street vendor the day before, though she had carefully followed all the reheating instructions – not that he wouldn't have been just as happy with spaghetti and hamburgers… and Oreos.

"Is this octopus?" he demanded, scowling a moment later, after hesitantly nibbling at the orange blob he'd picked out initially.

"Does it matter? Either you like or you don't," she insisted, which he did apparently, since he'd stopped griping and sniffing and moved on to cautious nibbling.

She wondered if it did, because sometimes she heard the nurses talking about cooking for their boy friends, as if you were just supposed to, but he liked doing other things together better anyway, they both did, and she wondered if that was what he meant when he'd said it was different for everybody.

"So we're celebrating octopus?" he asked skeptically, a moment later.

"No," she retorted, digging happily through her bag again. "These," she announced, pulling two baseball tickets out. "Sunday," she said smugly. "You can be an honorary Reds fan," she said, laughing again at his exaggerated grimace.

It rippled through her again, that feeling she got, like when she woke up early and found him still curled around her, the feeling that made her not want to get out of bed, though she loved her job, the feeling that made her stay there as long as she could, just listening to him breathe, the feeling that made her think he'd belonged there all along, even if she had tried to hide behind the pillows the first few times, the feeling that lingered under her fingertips, warm and quivery, whenever he sighed softly under her touch.

"Shut up," she huffed. "Iowa doesn't even have a baseball team." He was bluffing and they both knew it, because he loved going to those games, and he'd be in a cotton candy induced reverie by the fourth inning, and they'd already gotten Jacob a tiny Reds cap the last time they went, and he'd pouted for days when the last double header was sold out.

"Whatever," he grumbled, smirking as he finished off the orange stuff and dug into the cake. "So basically we're celebrating octopus?" he asked again, despite the rapidly spreading grin threatening to engulf his face, since he looked pretty much like how Jacob did when you put pizza or cookies in front of him, and they both knew it.

"Don't make me tell you what you just ate," she threatened, narrowing her gaze on him as she giggled again. And he shouldn't, because she couldn't explain it anyway, and he was probably just as confused, and it wasn't like she had the words to tell him that that feeling pretty much rippled through her all the time, now, and that she didn't think it'd ever go away, and that she didn't want him to, either, like – ever.

"It wasn't one of Phil's relatives, was it?" he asked, wide eyed and almost half seriously.

"Of course not," she said flatly. "That'd be cannibalism," she insisted, giggling again as she noted his expression, because cannibalism, like boy friend, or love, was one of those words that attracted a lot of attention, and it was scary, if you said it in the wrong place, and it could spook people if you weren't careful, and sometimes even the people saying it could be a little freaked, since it wasn't something you said just because.

"Okay," he agreed, exhaling finally. He didn't want to know, anyway, though he did check Phil out later that night, just to see if anything was missing, and whatever the orange stuff was, it didn't kill him, and she might actually know something about sisters, though she plainly didn't get Yang at all, and Jacob would need a matching Reds tee shirt now, anyway, and even octopus seemed vaguely forgivable later that evening when she was curled in his arms, dozing peacefully as sports news flickered in the background.

She pressed closer into his chest, her arms snaked around him, and he wondered if this was what Wyatt meant by serious, because it felt almost like she belonged there, almost like she wanted to be there, or maybe even expected to be there. She had expectations, he was sure – they always did, even if you never could tell what the hell they were.

Hers weren't always bad, though, not of him, since it wasn't like she expected him to be Mary Poppins, though she thought he was a good doctor, and it wasn't like she was just waiting for him to screw up all the time, even though he'd never been anybody's first, or ever their second choice, and she complained about stuff he did, but at least she gave him a freaking clue, and didn't act like he could never fix anything if he had half a chance.

He was sure she had other expectations, too, though, maybe even dreams, of a house like Mere's, with wide windowsills for Phil's family, and birdseed, and a huge television for football season, and a room like Jacob's, with space for a fort and plastic cowboys and Indians and farm animals, and probably a ring like Yang's, though she swore that the bridal magazines that she'd been carrying around were for Burke, and probably flowers, since weeds apparently weren't weeds once you put them in vases and fed them.

That stuff he could sort of picture, though, as the chatter about sports and surgeries and sisters dropped away, and she was still curled in his arms, and silence gave way to deep sighs and soft moans and smooth skin, and he woke to another note on his night stand, as if he didn't know exactly where she'd be, and another flurry of bird activity outside, and Phil sitting peacefully on the bedroom windowsill, since he was apparently no longer horrified by the sight of them doing number thirty four, even if she left the lights on.


	10. Chapter 10

_Standard disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual._

* * *

"Bridezilla send you over?" Alex asked, fidgeting as Meredith tried to untangle the mess he'd made of his tie. She giggled because Cristina had been crazed over the past week, about the guest list for the small ceremony, and the music that she had to decide on but couldn't, and wouldn't admit to, because then Burke would have been right.

"Careful," Meredith teased, frowning as she fumbled with the slippery material. "This could be you, soon. And if you say April's not your type," she threatened, narrowing her eyes and glaring at him, "I'm going to strangle you with this tie."

"That'd be more comfortable," he retorted, scowling as she tightened it around his collar.

"You sure you guys will be okay with Jacob for the weekend?" she asked seriously, running through her mental list of potential catastrophes again, while he just rolled his eyes at her. It was just a weekend at the beach, with Matt, by herself, and it wasn't like Jacob didn't know Alex and April, and it wasn't like she didn't still have time to have him micro chipped, and store a pint of her blood for him, just in case, and it wasn't like Jacob would even notice she was gone, after Alex broke out the Oreos.

"Sure," Alex muttered, frowning at her. "But I thought we'd just ditch April, hit the bars, pick up some chicks, you know, the usual," he nodded, making a sarcastic face at her.

"Have you seen the florist?" Cristina asked frantically as she ran up to them, her gauzy veil trailing behind her. "They left lilies instead of roses," she huffed incredulously.

"What's the difference?' Alex scowled. "There all just weeds."

"Lilies are usually for funerals," April piped up, breathlessly catching up with Cristina as he own dress fluttered around her.

"That works," he agreed, nodding seriously while they all glared at him.

"Why is he here again?" Cristina demanded impatiently, yanking out her cell phone.

"They're in the wedding," Meredith reminded her, almost giggling.

"Whose stupid idea was that?" she scowled.

"Yours," Meredith pointed out, rolling her eyes.

"Oh, right," she agreed, snapping her phone off abruptly and turning to leave.

"Where are you going?" Meredith asked.

"To check on the seating arrangements," Cristina retorted, as if it were perfectly obvious.

"You can't go out there now," Meredith insisted. "We're almost ready to start."

"It's bad luck," April added, nervously smoothing her dress, "for the groom to see the bride before the wedding."

"Dude," Alex and Cristina both said in unison, scowling at her, before grimacing at each other, while Meredith giggled, watching as Cristina stalked off, April trailing frantically behind her, muttering something about time worn traditions and good karma.

"Think he'll show this time?" Alex smirked, watching them leave.

"He's already here," Meredith insisted. "They're making it down that aisle this time if I have to shove them," she grumbled.

"Does Matt know you're this into weddings?" Alex asked, smirking again.

"I'm not," she huffed. "And it's just a weekend," she reminded him, checking his tie one more time before shoving him toward the double doors.

* * *

"Focus Evil Spawn," Cristina snapped impatiently, nearly six months later. "Why are we here again?" she demanded, rolling her eyes at Meredith.

"To help him pick a ring," Meredith retorted. "We're being supportive," she insisted, staring intently at Cristina. "And April likes yours."

"Mine is like a hundred years old," Cristina protested, as Alex grabbed her hand again and studied the metal band closely, before turning back to the endless rows of rings that loomed behind the long glass counter, trying to find a close match. "She'll probably say no, anyway," Christina snorted.

"Huh?" Alex asked, looking up abruptly as Meredith swatted Cristina.

"She knows your planning to ask her, right?" Meredith asked Alex hesitantly. "I mean, you've already got a plan for how you'll propose," she added, almost wincing, as he just looked at her, blinking and bewildered.

"I find a ring that matches, right?" he retorted. "How hard can that be?" he grumbled, frowning back at the display cases as he continued his search.

"He'll probably just leave it in a box on the coffee table," Cristina snorted. "And why couldn't he just bring Burke? He loves this crap."

"That's why," Alex grumbled, looking up at Meredith again. "Ask her how?" he echoed, scowling again.

"Romantically, dummy," Cristina snapped, folding her arms across her chest as she tapped her foot.

"Derek proposed in an elevator," Meredith sighed dreamily, "decorated with X-rays and CT scans. It was perfect," she exhaled heavily, sighing again.

"Burke begged," Cristina countered firmly, grimacing at Meredith's commentary. "Begging's good."

"I'm not begging," Alex scoffed. "And no elevators," he muttered, shuddering.

"That's not the point," Meredith insisted, eying him closely, as she sent Cristina off to look around the other side of the display counter. "You need to do something she'd like, something that would be special to her, and that will show her that you…you know."

"It's just a freaking ring," he protested, his face reddening. "It's not like-"

"Yes, it is," Meredith interrupted, correcting him abruptly. "To her, it is. You have to do this right. You…love her, right?" she prodded reluctantly, sure she was pressing her luck, since he already looked vaguely ill, possibly even ready to hurl.

"You did fine last time," she reminded him hesitantly, after an awkward silence. "You did all the important parts right."

"I never even got her a real ring," he muttered, staring back at the displays again.

"That was different," she protested, and it was, but she knew that he wasn't sure he was. That part she got. That part she'd always gotten.

"This one," Cristina snapped, breaking in abruptly and shoving a small white box into his hand, as she checked her watch impatiently again. "It's a close enough match. Pay and let's go. I want to stop for hot dogs before we go back to the hospital."

"Cristina," Meredith protested, staring at her as Alex examined the ring, and looked back again at Cristina's, grabbing her hand again to check the comparison.

"Yang's right," he agreed, nodding and dropping her hand abruptly, as he went off to the register with the little white box in tow.

"What?" Cristina retorted, meeting Meredith's stern gaze. "I'm hungry."

"Me too," Alex agreed, shoving the small box nervously into his pocket as they walked out of the shop, Meredith trailing behind them as she just shook her head.

Meredith was half sure that April would never actually see that ring, but the four of them finally ended up at City Hall six months later, and terse vows were exchanged, terse even by Alex's standards, and she didn't say a word when Cristina was his best man and she was April's maid of honor – even if none of them except April believed in luck or karma – and it was a rush to snag hot dogs and salty pretzels from a street vendor in time to get back to the hospital for two o'clock scrub ins.

"He proposed how?" Meredith asked April weeks later, at the lunch table, since she'd never actually gotten the whole story, and almost hadn't wanted to know.

"It all came off," Alex grumbled, scowling as he pictured the slimy yellow plant food that had streaked across her ring, after he'd perched it in Phil's branches on watering day.

"I was so surprised," April repeated, giggling again. "Who would expect that?"

"I told him to beg," Cristina insisted, shaking her head.

"I told him to do something romantic," Meredith echoed, frowning at him.

"That's not really him," April giggled again. "And I love the ring he picked," she added softly, fingering it again.

"I picked it," Cristina corrected, biting into her apple.

"Yang-" Alex growled, glaring at her.

"That doesn't matter," Meredith interrupted quickly, eying him sternly. "All that matters is that April likes it, right?" she added, staring at Alex insistently.

"Oh, I do," April nodded. "It was perfect."

"Didn't you want a big wedding?" Cristina asked, needling Alex again.

"Not really," April replied, shrugging. "My sisters would have fought over everything, like you and Burke did. And my mother…" she added, shaking her head wide eyed.

"Yeah, mine too," Cristina grumbled, knowing that look.

"She just wants grand kids, anyway," April added brightly, as Meredith nearly chocked on her salad and Cristina snickered and Alex's face reddened. "Not that we're ready for that yet," she added, glancing at Meredith, who was wiping Jacob's sticky hands. "I mean, we just got the inscriptions on our rings," she said, as if that explained it all.

"Oh," Meredith said quickly, happy to change the subject. "What did you settle on?"

"OSU loves IU," April said, smiling shyly at Alex.

"What?" Cristina asked, plainly bewildered.

"Ohio State University loves Iowa University," April announced, looking up as if that were perfectly obvious.

"Your medical schools?" Meredith asked, glancing curiously at April and then Alex, who just shrugged casually and stuffed more French Fries into his mouth.

"You had to be there," April giggled, eying Alex mischievously.

"Number thirty six," Alex agreed, nodding smugly.

"Ugh," Meredith protested, motioning to Jacob again. "What did I tell you about talking about that stuff around him?" she demanded.

"The stork brings babies," Alex repeated, nodding again and offering Jacob a French fry.

"Two state schools shouldn't breed" Cristina added, nodding seriously while slurping her drink.

* * *

"You sure you and April will be okay with Jacob?" Meredith asked again, almost a year later. It was one thing for Matt to be living with her and Jacob, but it was still another thing entirely to go away for another weekend without her son, even if Jacob loved Alex and April, and the water park that she was sure they'd take him to because they spoiled him, and the menu, because Jacob's favorite food was usually whatever Alex was eating.

"We already have his room ready," Alex pointed out. "And his Scooby Doo blanket," he added, cutting her off before she could ask about that for the third time. They had the same freaking conversation every time that Jacob stayed over, as if he and April were criminals, or didn't know child CPR, or would forget that he needed to be fed regularly.

"He has his own room," she sighed wistfully. "He's moving away from me already."

She'd been sure of that, at one point, that Jacob would learn all about his father, and see the scrap book she'd made, and hate her for bringing Matt into their lives.

He'd run away, she imagined, across the country – or maybe just to Alex and April's – and he'd live on junk food, and he'd grow dark and twisty, despite April's penchant to celebrate – anything – and he'd appear on all the afternoon talk shows, and he'd tell an aging Oprah and a senile Dr. Phil that his mother was a dirty, dirty mistress, cheating on his dead father's memory.

"We live next door," Alex reminded her, scowling again. "We're not going anywhere." It had just made sense, to buy the place next door, since April liked the neighborhood, too, and it already had a tree house and a huge swing set, and Jacob's little wading pool fit in the backyard, and they could keep an eye on Matt, who'd always seemed cool but you could never tell for sure, and it wasn't like a kid couldn't have an Oreo once in a while and still be healthy, which he sort of knew, since he was the freaking Stork.

"I know," she said quietly. "And Jacob would miss you, if you did."

"He would, huh?" Alex smirked.

"Sure," she insisted, grinning mischievously. "I don't spoil him like some people."

"Well, maybe we should adopt him," Alex said, raising his eyebrows at her.

"Get your own kid," she retorted.

"His wife is a sex kitten," Cristina chortled, dropping her tray down and dragging a chair up to the lunch table.

"Don't feed him," Meredith grumbled suddenly, as Cristina absently piled a few extra pickles on Alex's hot dog. "He's trying to steal my son," she muttered.

"Can't you just make your own?" Cristina scowled at Alex. "Or can't you?" she taunted, leaning forward curiously. "Is there a p-r-o-b-l-e-m?" she snickered.

"There's no problem," Alex announced smugly, folding his arms across his chest. "Fifty six this morning, twice, in the shower."

"Oh, that's tricky," Cristina agreed, nodding quickly. "Burke and I tried that."

"Traction," they both noted simultaneously, frowning and nodding seriously.

"Too much information," Meredith grimaced, almost out of habit, since Jacob wasn't with them.

"So is this the weekend?" Cristina asked. "You think he'll propose?"

"It's not like that," Meredith protested. "It's just a weekend. We'll get away, have a nice time, maybe do some hiking," she insisted, rolling her eyes again when she caught their skeptical expressions. "And I already know about the pool," she growled, glaring at them as they glanced guiltily at each other.

"We'll need to know the exact date and time," Cristina said, almost sheepishly.

"He's not proposing," Meredith insisted, shaking her head. He couldn't, because she had Jacob to think about, and she was an Attending now, and it was just a weekend, and he was smart and funny and kind and basically perfect and he loved her son and Jacob loved him and he already knew how to humor Cristina and Alex had stopped haranguing him which was definitely a bad sign, Alex's approval, since Alex was a freaking bookie who was probably going to take Jacob bar hopping that weekend while she was off being a dirty mistress.

"Think he'll beg?" Alex asked, smirking at Cristina.

"Only if he's stupid enough to hide the ring in a bush or something," Cristina retorted. "Honestly, did we not tell you what to do?" she demanded, rolling her eyes at him.

"He's not proposing," Meredith repeated, staring at the table. He couldn't, because he already knew that she was a pathetic widow and a frazzled single mother, and that she snored and had split ends and a family history of Alzheimer's and a chubby son who loved Oreos, and he'd already met her quirky little family – which, if that didn't scare him off, what was wrong with him – and maybe that all meant he just wasn't very bright.

"April loves Phil," Alex grumbled, scowling at Cristina.

"He's not proposing," Meredith repeated. He couldn't, because that would mean he loved her as much as she loved him, and she couldn't love him no matter what Wyatt said, even if she did, because then Jacob would have a new father and she'd have a new life and that wasn't what she'd planned at all and she'd already made promises and proposals were all about new promises and how could she do that when she still spent too many mornings trying to get peanut butter out of her split ended hair.

"He's probably better company," Cristina agreed.

"He's not proposing," Meredith repeated. He couldn't, because he already lived with her, and he cooked but left the kitchen a disaster and he never did laundry and a trail of papers followed him everywhere, worse then Cristina's even, and he ate too much ice cream and he was whiny and passive aggressive when he was mad and he sulked when he didn't get his way and he liked to watch game shows and golf – golf? – and he was crabby when he was tired and he snored louder then her, and his denials made it worse, and he had more clothes then her and he collected goofy silk holiday ties and toy cars – as if he was freaking five – and it just drove her mad how much she loved him despite it all.

"Maybe Burke should get one," Alex retorted, stabbing at his vegetables.

"A kid?" Meredith asked blankly, not sure what she'd missed, exactly.

"Not even if he has it himself," Cristina insisted vehemently.

"Matt likes kids," Meredith said quietly. "He loves Jacob."

"No kidding," Cristina said sarcastically. "You think he'd propose if he didn't. You guys are like a package deal. Like April and Phil," she added, snickering again.

"What if he proposes?" she asked seriously. "I mean, he won't, but-"

"Get the date and time," Cristina reminded her seriously. There's over four grand riding on this."

"Keep your eyes open for the ring," Alex advised, wide eyed. "Damn things are hard to clean, especially those little crevices."

* * *

"Please say something," April asked quietly, not that she'd been any better, since Beth had told her to just be direct, and Dani had told her to show him the stick and Carrie had just laughed and it was all she could think of, finally, since the words wouldn't come out in the right order, to just pull the tiny OSU jersey that her parents had sent the week they married – not that she'd showed it to him back then, since they hadn't even had their rings inscribed by then – and set it on the coffee table next to his chocolate milk.

"I thought you said you weren't ready yet," he replied finally, his head still swimming, and he was sure he'd heard her say that out loud and it wasn't like she'd been dropping hints – not that he'd have noticed, probably – and sure her parents wanted grandkids but they had four daughters so even mathematically it was just a matter of time.

"We will be," she insisted breathlessly as she gripped his arm a little too tight. "You'll be a great dad," she added, nodding enthusiastically. "You already play with Jacob all the time," she noted, careful not to call it baby sitting. "And you watch football with him and you eat all the same foods and you both like Scooby Doo. He loves you," she pointed out happily, a huge smile spreading over her face as her eyes widened.

"You're excited," he said, more as a statement then a question, and maybe more about him then her, since he had no idea how to be a father but he could watch football and Scooby with a kid, and defending a fort over run by plastic Indians and random farm animals was more complicated then you'd think and food was food and Mere went over board with that organic stuff and April always had Oreos in the house, anyway.

"I am," she insisted, her grin taking over her whole body, and her hands were still shaking a little too much to tell him that she'd imagined their child already, and even drawn her in her journal, a little girl with reddish hair and his eyes which changed color depending on the light or the angle she looked at him from and his shy smile, the one he usually ever used only when he thought no one else was looking, or maybe just her, and sometimes Meredith, and Jacob when they were off on some adventure together.

"You are," he smirked, and he noticed that she was probably nervous since her voice was shaking but she wasn't freaked like Mere had been and she wasn't dark and twisty, just neurotic, and it wasn't like she'd ever had a kid before either but she'd been willing to learn other stuff and they probably had magazines about kid crap, too, and she actually expected him to be a good father, and the way she was looking at him almost made him believe she was right, and maybe if Mere had learned to do the kid thing, he could too.

"I am," she repeated, throwing her arms around him, and he still felt like he did all those mornings after, except wrapped in flannel because they were in the living room and still dressed, and he still felt like he belonged there and she'd never forget that spot along his spine that practically put him to sleep no matter how jittery or stressed he was, and that was it because she heard a familiar soft sigh, and they could be nervous together and her mother would have advice – she always did – and they could even ask Meredith about things because Jacob was healthy and happy and they always had Oreos in the house.

"I am," she repeated, as he pulled her closer, and she was trembling but not in a terrified way, exactly, and her body was molding into his, again, and her hair swept his face and her hands ran down his body and he was dizzy again for an entirely different reason and her fingers just drained every ounce of tension out of his body as they usually did at night and she was still entirely too warm and she curved in all the right places and he wasn't even vaguely aware of anything again else until her lips brushed his neck.

"So we're having a kid?" he asked moments later, still semi incredulously as he reached tentatively toward her waist.

"You can't feel her yet," April giggled, gently taking his hand.

"Her?" he asked, almost skeptically, though he was already picturing a little girl with reddish hair and freckles and a smile that consumed her whole body, like the pictures she'd shown him, when she was trying to get him to keep her sisters' name straight.

"Her," she said smugly. "I have a feeling."

"So did Mere," Alex smirked, not bothering to add that Mere had been dead wrong.

"We'll have to tell her," April insisted happily. "And we'll have to call Amber."

"So does anyone else know already?" Alex asked, "Besides your sisters?"

"Just Phil," April assured him, giggling as she watched Alex roll his eyes. "And how do you know I already told my sisters?" she asked suspiciously.

"Had a feeling," he observed, smirking again as she took his hand and dragged him back to their bedroom. More feelings followed, as her body curled around him afterward and she was actually excited and it was still like she wanted him, like he'd be her first choice, and it was still like she belonged there, like she'd always belong there, and she still kept her promises as her hands and her body wrapped eagerly around him, and he'd felt for babies before, babies that weren't really there, but she wasn't crazy, just neurotic, and she actually wanted a kid with him for real, which should be even scarier but wasn't, exactly, after his breathing finally slowed, and she drifted off peacefully in his arms.

"Iowa," she whispered again the next morning, giggling at his sleepy sighs as her hands wandered, except for the truce rules because she'd promised and that would be just mean and rude, and he was still warm and quivery, and it was still like he belonged there, like she couldn't imagine him anywhere else, really, and she'd have to order a tiny IU jersey, too, just to be fair, but that could wait until later that day since he was still snoring softly into her chest and really that was one of her favorite places to keep him, even if honestly, like a Hawkeye could ever beat a Buckeye in a serious fight – mixed marriage or not.

* * *

"Ours was better," Cristina's said smugly, settling back into Burke's arms as she gazed across Meredith's backyard, a faint breeze stirring as dusk set in around them, while a large fire pit crackled and candles shimmered in the looming darkness.

"It's a competition?" Burked smirked, closing his arms around her. The question was entirely rhetorical, because they both knew that everything was a competition – every surgery, every dinner, every cup of coffee, every marriage – that was just who they were.

"I'm just saying," she noted reluctantly, as her fingers knotted through his, "that I liked our wedding better." And she had, because it hadn't been about the dress and the place settings for him either, after all, it never had been, and she hadn't been sure of that, not entirely, until his eyes met hers on the podium, and the flowers and the rice and the over stuffed center-pieces and the over-wrought mother in laws all just dropped away, and it was just them, just like it was supposed to be, just like it was always supposed to be.

"Me too," he agreed, his voice echoing through her again, as his own ring glimmered in the flickering light, and it was them, too, his ring, simple and timeless and elegant, and it made a bizarre sort of sense, that she could see his reflection almost, in hers, whenever she slipped it onto the delicate chain around her neck before scrubbing in, before her fingers closed around another heart, reminding her with each beat that she was still herself.

"I hated the flowers, though," she grumbled, and he just rolled his eyes, because the florists' mistake would be unforgivable, at least for a while longer, and perfection was a challenging standard, and he knew that at least as well as she did, since she was still her, and he was still him, and at least fate had finally set something right.

"Hey," Meredith interrupted, coming up breathlessly beside them, and pushing her unruly hair over her shoulders. "Do you know anything about barbecuing?" she asked Burke hesitantly, glancing across the yard at Alex and her new husband, "because those two are going to send my wedding up in smoke, literally, if someone doesn't help them."

"I'll see what I can do," Burke agreed, rising gracefully, his rich baritone playful as he smiled at Meredith and started off across the yard.

"So was there another pool?" Meredith asked teasingly, sitting back on the huge lawn chair as Cristina took another sip of her beer.

"No," Cristina insisted, rolling her eyes. "But it looks like we'll need to start another one," she snorted, motioning to where April stood, talking to the Chief, "for the Evil Spawnlett. You weren't that big," she added, scowling and shaking her head.

"I was too," Meredith grumbled, watching wistfully as Jacob chased Alex and Matt across the yard, giggling and laughing, football in tow. "My baby," she sighed.

"Oh, brother," Cristina grumbled, rolling her eyes. "Pathetic."

"I know," Meredith agreed quietly, twirling her own ring around her finger. She'd never expected any of it, the ring, or the wedding, or the marriage license – or Matt.

"He's good, you know," Cristina said finally, watching her closely. "I mean, for a bean counter."

"Right," Meredith agreed, smirking, since she knew that was about the highest praise her friend could imagine for a non surgeon, and it was strangely reassuring, as reassuring as Alex's growing willingness to have Matt help him char a set of hamburgers – not that the local fire department would appreciate that particular cooking team – as reassuring as Jacob's wide smile, and hiccupping laughter, as the football game picked up speed.

"He'd be happy for you, you know," Cristina said softly.

"Yeah," Meredith agreed finally, glancing reflexively at the stars over-head, "I think he would be."

Her peace lasted exactly thirty six seconds, before a sopping wet inflatable football landed on Cristina, while Burke's laughter echoed around them, and she was off in a flash, in hot pursuit, as he fled across the lawn.

"That won't end well," Alex smirked, retrieving the ball and tossing it to Jacob, who shrieked and ran off excitedly again.

"So I'm going to be an aunt," she teased, eyeing him closely. They'd all known for a few weeks, now, but she still couldn't help teasing him. ""Cristina's already starting a pool, you know," she giggled.

"It's a boy," he said smugly, fingering his beer bottle, his hands trembling slightly.

"A little Evil Spawn?" she said. "You know that'll give Cristina nightmares right?"

"Bonus," he nodded, his hands still trembling slightly as he sipped his beer and glanced across the yard where April and Matt and Jacob were playing with a plastic bowling set.

* * *

"Bailey won," Cristina noted, peering over Alex's shoulder, down into two bassinets. "You said they were going to be boys," she added, swatting his arms.

"April didn't want to know," he shrugged, watching hesitantly as one of his daughters curled her tiny hand determinedly around his finger. "Feel that grip," he muttered. "She could go Ortho," he said, nodding seriously.

"This one's definitely Cardio," Cristina replied, testing the other baby's hand. "Have you made flash cards for them, yet? Jacob's already behind," she added, her voice concerned, as she looked up suddenly, checking to make sure Meredith wasn't in ear shot.

"They're girls," Alex smirked, shaking his head incredulously, as if he hadn't realistically considered the possibility until a few hours ago, when he actually met them.

"No kidding, Sherlock," Cristina snorted. "What tipped you off? The pink name tags?"

"I already bought footballs for them," he muttered, more to himself then to her, as he brushed his fingers lightly across the baby's cheek.

"Doesn't April like football?" Cristina demanded. "Women like stupid stuff, too. Don't be sexist."

"I'm not," he grumbled defensively.

"You'll figure it out," Cristina insisted a moment later, rolling her eyes at him.

"Huh?" Alex asked, looking up at her abruptly, scowling.

"The girl thing," she said impatiently. "You'll, you'll be a good dad."

"Right," he agreed hesitantly.

"I still miss mine," she added quietly, not looking at him. "He was a great dad. He died. But I always knew he loved me."

"That's all it takes, huh?" he asked skeptically.

"It's a start," she shrugged. "Well, that and flash cards."

"Not flash cards again," Meredith muttered, coming up behind them. "Did she mention the Invisible Woman model in your locker?" Meredith asked, motioning to Cristina with a frown as she watched Alex grow wide eyed.

"With the removable circulatory system?" he asked Cristina excitedly.

"I know, right," she agreed, nodding happily. "They'll kick butt in pre-school."

"You're both impossible," Meredith insisted, watching Cristina shrug as she went off to answer a page.

"So I'm finally an aunt, huh?" Meredith asked, reaching in delicately to touch one of the babies.

"You want to meet them?" Alex asked, eagerly scooping up a small bundle out of the nearest bassinet. "This is Ellie," he said, placing the infant in Meredith's arms. "And this is Evie," he added, bending over to carefully adjust the other child's tiny cap, before lifting her from the crib, settling her closely against his chest.

"I thought you ordered boys," she teased, gently rocking Ellie.

"Mix up at the Stork's factory," he grumbled, rolling his eyes.

"So you're going to exchange them?" she giggled, watching as he traced one of his fingers delicately along her face, before surveying her tiny hands.

"Maybe," he mumbled, smirking at Evie as she let out a huge yawn. "Just what I need, three chicks who snore," he added, shaking his head, as he pulled Evie closer, stroking his fingers delicately across her gauzy wisps of hair.

"I'll take them," Meredith teased. "Jacob would love to have sisters."

"I'll run that by April when she wakes up," he smirked, cradling Evie closer to him.

"She said Amber's coming for another visit," Meredith said, gently returning Ellie to her bassinet, where the infant curled sleepily under her blanket.

"Yeah," he said, placing Evie back as well, and still fingering the edges of her tiny cap. "She just finished her first year of nursing school," he added, retreating with Meredith as two nurses came by to check the babies' vitals. "She wants to meet her nieces," he added, shrugging sheepishly.

"She wants to check up on her big brother," Meredith teased, "whose an Attending, with two beautiful daughters."

"They are, aren't they?" he asked softly, watching closely as the nurses worked.

"Of course they are," Meredith agreed, leaning against him. "They look just like their mother," she added, giggling mischievously as he rolled his eyes.

* * *

"What are we celebrating again?" Cristina asked the following summer, frowning as she held up random stripped party favors.

"Amber's graduation from nursing school," Meredith reminded her, watching her family run amok in Alex's back yard.

"She's here?" Cristina asked suddenly, scanning the yard more closely.

"Not yet," Meredith said, laughing. "She's coming next week for the real party. "But you know April," she added, motioning to the well stocked picnic table, and the matching cups and plates, and the fruit bowl with the perfectly scalloped cantaloupe and water melon and honey dew chunks, "she's always ready for a barbecue."

"She's like the female Burke," Cristina agreed, nodding as she watched her husband and Alex's wife in an animated discussion near the grill, probably about exotic Cajun spices, or new meat thermometers, or the proper placement for vegetable condiments.

"How does she even have time to do that?" Meredith marveled, watching as Bailey and Richard juggled the twins, in their competing OUS and IU baseball jerseys, while Tuck and Jacob joined Alex and Matt in a raucous game of… something loud.

"She's not normal," Cristina announced. "She can't be. She married Evil spawn," she pointed out, as if that said it all. "I have no idea how Amber and Aaron turned out so well," she added, shaking her head. "They must have gotten the brains in that family," she insisted, scowling as Alex and Matt arranged plastic bowling pins on the grass.

"You're right," Meredith teased. "April should have married Burke. They could be professional party planners together."

"She can have him," Cristina grumbled, shaking her head again as she watched him dramatically demonstrate how to create a barbecue stir fry, like the high strung chefs on those cooking shows he watched. "He's such a ham," she pointed out, motioning to him again and shaking her head, "we might as well just toss him on the grill, too.

"Really," Meredith smirked.

"No," Cristina agreed quietly, almost pouting, because he was still Burke, and she was still her, and amid all the squabbling and the competing and his ham-hood and her perfectionism, that was all that would ever matter, even if neither of them would admit that, especially not to each other, not after they'd battled each other tooth and nail all the way down their wedding aisle, to the only place they'd ever belonged in the first place.

"I'm going to get another," Cristina added, standing quickly and lifting her beer bottle, as another light breeze stirred around them "You want one?" she asked, moving toward the candle lined table covered with every species of junk food imaginable, and a few exotic entrees they both doubted had been identified in any biology textbook.

"I can't drink, remember," Meredith retorted, rising slowly and following her to the cooler, in search of an iced tea, or a maybe a cream soda.

"Sugar?" Alex teased, raising his eyebrows as he handed her a bottle of the cheery soda she'd been craving for the past few weeks. "Shouldn't he be eating all organic, all-" he continued, motioning to her waist as he dropped into a large lawn chair with Ellie in his arms and a root beer perched in his hand.

"Shut up," Meredith interrupted, snatching the soda from him as she dropped into the seat as well, lightly brushing Ellie's cheek as the little girl smiled sleepily at her, her familiar hazel eyes and shy smile almost making Meredith laugh.

"I don't know how April does it with two," she added quietly, after a comfortable silence, watching the party swirl around them as she ran her fingers hesitantly along the hem line of her shirt. "Well, three, really," she teased, motioning to Alex as she sipped her soda, while Ellie burrowed closer into his chest

"So, I'm going to be an uncle again, huh?" he smirked.

"Yeah," she agreed, leaning back in the chair and gazing across the yard, where Jacob and Matt were ominously filling water balloons. It was just a matter of time before Burke would get involved, and then Cristina, and then everyone else, and it would all lead back to her delinquent son, and the original supplier of the water balloons, who'd started him on Oreos in first place, and was a freaking bookie, well, with Cristina, and would always be a bad influence, since Jacob still had a room in their home, too.

"Yeah," she repeated softly, a smile dancing on her lips, because she was sure she'd have a little girl this time, and she'd be an angel, her work schedule wasn't as crazed, and Matt was thrilled, and Jacob would have a sister, and Jacob had already survived her quirky little family and he was still all giggling, hiccupping laughter and more kinds of mischief then she could count and he still threw his arms around her with glee, even when he was covered with peanut butter – or octopus sauce, when he ran home from one of April's impromptu barbecues – and an all organic probably wasn't entirely necessary, anyway.

"Yeah," she smirked, leaning lightly against Alex and brushing her fingers over his sleeve, as she watched Jacob laughing again, while Cristina fled a barrage of water balloons. "You're going to be an uncle again," she whispered, smiling widely.


End file.
